The first free online resource for pre-service teachers I completed was a course called Psychological First Aid. John Hopkins University and Coursera partnered up to create this short course (the estimated completion time is seven hours) on Psychological First Aid. It’s free to audit or as the yearly free course offered by Coursera to university students who sign up with their academic email address. Coursera advertises that after course completion, attendees will be able to:
– Discuss key concepts related to PFA
– Listen reflectively
– Differentiate benign, non-incapacitating psychological/ behavioral crisis reactions from more severe, potentially incapacitating, crisis reactions
– Prioritize (triage) psychological/ behavioral crisis reactions
– Mitigate acute distress and dysfunction, as appropriate
– Recognize when to facilitate access to further mental health support
– Practice self-care
I think this course would definitely be of use to me while teaching in B.C in the future. We never want our students to experience a crisis, but it’s important to be able to help them as much as we can if they ever are. On a more daily basis, I think this course is helpful for teaching how to listen reflectively, know when to direct a student to further mental health support, and how to practice self-care if we are in a situation where someone needs psychological first aid.