Dive Brief:
- Aspiring teachers at New York University are being trained to identify mental health and crisis intervention among secondary students, a key development in the nation's heightened awareness of mass violence in high schools.
- Professors use crisis scenarios from previous teaching experience to help students better understand indicators of bullying, abuse, and harassment. Students are taught "how to spot troubled individuals, how to talk to them in various situations, and who to reach out to in orchestrating help," according to an article in University Business.
- NYU also grades students on their responses to professor-created crisis scenarios, with answers assessed by a panel of school counselors, youth outreach directors and healthcare professionals. The panel offers special emphasis for students' ability to maintain confidentiality and reporting integrity.
Dive Insight:
NYU presents a key example of how colleges can create synergy between workforce development and industrial need. While the nation continues to determine its stance on gun access, constitutional rights and public safety, its school of education has taken a broad approach to create additional skills for graduates, which can translate into professional opportunities beyond being hired as a first-year teacher.
This shows how quickly campuses can adapt to curating programming that benefits students and partners beyond campuses. This particular initiative did not appear to take weeks or months to develop, possibly because of the state's mandates for crisis intervention training for new teachers. However, the elements which apply to today's controversy over school violence seem to naturally integrate emerging ideas and theories in communication, interpersonal intervention, and student privacy.
Districts will look to universities for training expertise on these issues, and colleges will receive federal funding to provide solutions to these issues for political cover and enhancement of public safety structures in potentially vulnerable areas.