Mental Health in the Modern World
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- I believe this should be a discussion based course since this is a topic that can be talked about for hours. There would also be a final paper in which students get to write about a specific topic, such as beauty standards, and mental health.
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- The Beauty Clause by Melissa Sievers, Jordan Moses and Audrey Johnston
- This course is unique since it touches base on a topic that many young people are impacted by.
- The class would be discussion based, with debates and times where students get to speak on the book they read or the topic we are presenting on. I believe group presentations would also be beneficial since they teach students how to work together while also learning important information. A final paper would be given to test how much they have learnt throughout the course.
Your course would be very helpful, especially for students. It would help them understand mental health and it would also help others that are suffering from mental health issues. I’d recommend students to take your course as it would bring awareness to those suffering and make them feel more comfortable to seek the help they need.
I agree with Jose that this course would be particularly helpful to students since young people suffer the most from mental health problems caused by existing beauty standards. It is therefore critical to have a course like yours to raise mental health awareness.
I think that the idea for a discussion based class on mental health is a great idea. Because college students go through some relatively strenuous times mentally, I see how it could be useful to them, however I do worry that in making it purely based in discussion leaves a little room for students to begin talking about their personal problems, which leads to a risk of this course becoming one big therapy session. I don’t feel that that would necessarily be such a bad thing, and would likely still help a lot of students learn about mental illness, but perhaps you planned to add a moderator or something of the sort.
This is a great idea, but I am just wondering about how the course would be organized. Are there units, or are you just going off student debates and discussions? For example, are the discussions going to be centered around different types of mental illnesses in one month and the effects of cyberbullying in another?
This topic is important because it is very recent and it impacts many people. However, I am unsure how this course would be graded. For instance, discussions were mentioned, but how can you attach a grade for the discussions? Moreover, the final paper was discussed, but would that account for 100% of the grade. Additionally, group presentations were briefly announced, but what would students be presenting? Would they just be re-teaching what others have already read?