Connecting Mental Health Clinical to Classroom Activities

Abstract

The student said, “Oh, that is why we learned that!”. The student that sparked this research admitted that as she went through the program she often thought, “why are we learning this? I cannot see utilizing this in my everyday job.” In academia today, we often treat the clinical or practicum experience as a separate component of the learning. Some schools even front load the content so they do all of the experiential learning after the classroom portion is over. Experiential learning works best when the learner can connect what they see and hear in the classroom to what they are actually seeing and doing in the field. There are a number of ways to bring the two worlds together. One program did just that and based on findings, the students felt better prepared for the job after graduation. The element of the unknow was removed. Students reported feeling more prepared for their new career and were able to fully grow during the orientation.