About the Project
Bridging Mental Health and Education in Urban Schools (BRIDGE) is a teacher consultation and coaching model aimed at increasing effective classroom interactions and improving the academic engagement of children with behavioral health challenges. Mental health professionals receive training and support to consult with teachers around observed classroom interactions and student behaviors, as well as to coach teachers to use class-wide and targeted intervention strategies to promote academic and social-emotional learning.
BRIDGE was designed for underfunded school districts with human resources, such as school-based mental health staff, but limited financial resources. BRIDGE provides a framework for school mental health professionals to use when working with the teachers of students with behavioral health needs. BRIDGE is implemented in 3 to 4 month cycles, with a typical cycle involving a teacher interview to understand their priorities and student strengths, observations of the classroom as a whole and focal student(s), and consultation and coaching with teachers. BRIDGE offers teachers a toolkit of evidence-based strategies to be implemented with focal students and across the classroom with support from school mental health staff. School mental health staff who integrate BRIDGE into their daily workflow with teachers and students attend a 3.5 day training and receive follow-on in-person coaching and virtual consultation.
A classroom-randomized controlled trial of BRIDGE conducted in schools serving primarily Latine and Black students found that BRIDGE increased effective classroom interactions and improved teacher-student relationships and students’ academic self-concept. Children with externalizing symptoms in BRIDGE classrooms experienced less peer victimization than children in classrooms where teachers were not assigned to BRIDGE.
Readings
Cappella, E., Hamre, B. K., Kim, H. Y., Henry, D. B., Frazier, S. L., Atkins, M. S., & Schoenwald, S. K. (2012). Teacher consultation and coaching within mental health practice: Classroom and child effects in urban elementary schools. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 80(4), 597-610. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027725
Cappella, E., Jackson, D. R., Bilal, C., Hamre, B. K., & Soulé, C. (2011). Bridging mental health and education in urban elementary schools: Participatory research to inform intervention development. School Psychology Review, 40(4), 486-508. https://doi.org/10.1080/02796015.2011.12087526
Cappella, E., Jackson, D. R., Kim, H. Y., Bilal, C., Holland, S., & Atkins, M. S. (2016). Implementation of teacher consultation and coaching in urban schools: A mixed method study. School Mental Health, 8(2), 222-237. doi: 10.1007/s12310-015-9165-9
Nadeem, E., Cappella, E., Holland*, S., Coccarro, C., & Crisonino, G. (2016). Development and piloting of a classroom-focused measurement feedback system using a community partnered approach. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 43(3), 379-393. doi: 10.1007/s10488-015-0651-z
Albright, J., Worley, J., Rushworth, S., Cappella, E., Hwang, S., Testa, S., Duresso, B., Dallard, N., Banks, J., Du, C., Lawson, G., & Wolk, C.B. (in press). A community-partnered process for adapting a mental health teacher consultation model for a large-scale rollout in urban schools. School Mental Health.
Project Leadership
This school mental health services and implementation project is led by Drs. Courtney Benjamin Wolk (UPenn), Julie Worley (UPenn), Elise Cappella (NYU), and Sophia Hwang (UMBC) with funding from the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services, Community Behavioral Health (CBH) Division to the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine.
Questions? Reach out to Elise Cappella at elise.cappella@nyu.edu.
Link to other project site: https://hosting.med.upenn.edu/cmh/mhil/