How Teachers Can Strengthen Student Mental Health and Wellbeing
William Jacob Krovitz, July 16, 2023
Audio Available on Spotify
When it comes to being an educator today, we are bombarded with the continuing weight on our shoulders. For me, our department just bought a new curriculum I am not a fan of, grading, planning, instructing, connecting with students, meetings, workshops, phone calls, classroom management, and so much more. We love our jobs and our kids (at least I would hope so). Personally, I wouldn't change anything about my job or my students for anything in the world. As I approach my second year of teaching, I look forward to one of the most important aspects of my job: creating, building, and sustaining connections with my students. With all the mishigas of teaching has to throw at us, this is the highlight of my job.
I work at a high-risk STEAM school, where many of my students bring a lot of mental baggage. I work with seventh graders, which is the time where some of them go through the greatest amount of change. It's also the time where their mental health and wellbeing can be a challenge, as they don't have the knowledge and skills to cope and work through troubles and be able to self-manage. Students are grappling with changing bodies and changing minds, but their mental health literacy is undeveloped.
Students come with different backgrounds and experiences. This is apparent the minute you walk into any classroom just by looking at student expressions, body language, and some even will walk up to you and tell you everything without prompt. The amount of mental clutter they carry is astronomical. It's hard to believe how much some of them hold inside, and what we do see is only a fraction of what is actually lying below the surface.
But with all we are loaded with as teachers, how could we possibly add mental health literacy to our teaching, classrooms, or curriculum? Would you be surprised that you, just being their teacher, already adds to the fostering of our students' mental health?
According to Raymond Wallar (2006) in his book, Fostering Child and Adolescent Mental Health in the Classroom, “[we] are already helping children who have mental health problems by fostering one of the most valuable tools available—psychological resilience.” He claims that educators contribute by displaying “empathy, trust, and patience” to our students, which are skills “that are paramount in supporting the development of protective factors in students.” Just by being you, relating and connecting with your students, actively listening to them (rather than hearing) when they approach you, showing them empathy, trust, and patience, and just generalized care for that individual kiddo, you are instilling those qualities, behaviors, and interpersonal and intrapersonal skills in your students.
Although this seems easy and may come naturally to some of us, I know what some of us are thinking, myself included: But what about those kids who are mentally shut down or have built barriers between themselves and those around them? Wallar approaches this concern. He states that some of our students won't have the trauma and “bad events” that others do. We will also have children “who do not seem to suffer significantly and seem protected” from traumatic or serious events (Wallar, 2006). We also have students who have various levels of “psychological risk factors” that affect our students' mental health, “including low levels of family cohesion, not living with both biological parents, low socioeconomic status, and a history of child maltreatment,” and more (Wallar, 2006). So what do we do with the students who have it rough or are labeled “at-risk”? Are we catching them? How do we add to them and their mental health literacy without losing ourselves in the rough?
Many of our students have to deal with these things, and our presence and display of “empathy, trust, and patience” and care can only do so much. Wallar (2006) presents a few additional strategies to promote psychological resilience.
First, Wallar (2006) suggests something we can all do: be there. Just being there and having positive interactions with our students can provide a stabilizing foundation and strengthen psychological resilience. Although there are people, such as counselors or social workers, who can offer specialized help for students and can be an extremely valuable resource for both teachers and students, we can truly help students just by being there.
There are two students that come to mind when it comes to “being there.” We'll call them Aiden and Brody. Aiden is a transgender student who started school two-thirds of the way through the school year. He quickly made a few friends with a few other LGBTQ+ students. I connected quickly with Aiden because I saw a lot of who I was in Aiden growing up. Aiden has a lot of anxiety and sometimes has physical reactions to their anxiety, like their hands locking up or physically punching themselves in panic. Immediately, we became a close duo, and I knew he could rely on me when he needed me. At times, Aiden would come to my classroom during the day, and I wouldn't even need to ask why. He'd come in, sit in the single desk next to mine, and just deep breathe. I didn't even need to talk to him; I just needed to be in his presence in case he needed me. If he really needed me or to talk, we came up with the strategy for him to use a notebook to write down all his thoughts, and when we could connect, I would read over his thoughts and if we had time, we'd talk, or I would write back in response to his thoughts.
Brody, on the other hand, was an energetic, smart, athletic kid with ADHD. Although I'm not sure how his mental health was, really. He always seemed positive and doing well. I do know this about him and his mental health. Brody would come up to me throughout the day during passing time or during downtime in class and just rattle off different things. Sometimes it was about school or a crush or the assignment or how gym class went or what he was making for dinner, but regardless of what it is, the words came out at 100 miles per hour. And regardless of the million words he launched at me, I stood and actively listened to him. I knew it helped him relieve some of the chatter in his head and release some energy. It built a connection between us, and he knew he could rely on me to be there for him (when appropriate, of course). I say this because I'm the teacher that connects well with students, so sometimes they will come to my classroom when they should be in a different class.
Another strategy Wallar (2006) provides is being positive. This can be tricky when teachers are very instruction focused and bad behaviors are quashed with punishments. It's becoming a regular focus in our classrooms. I even saw it in my classroom last year when I realized a majority of my time was spent not on instructing but rather on classroom and behavior management. I have three logs (parent communication log, behavior incidents log, and a tardiness tracker log). Trust me, the frustration can make one really cranky some days.
I'm going to add to Wallar's research and strategies by adding something to “being positive.” Being positive doesn't mean to mask your negative feelings. That's not good for our mental health either to hide and bottle up our own feelings. That's when one student breaks the camel's back and we lose our cool. This is the chance to be upfront with our kiddos and be transparent with them. This, I feel, could be another strategy Wallar could add to his research: transparency of self. I found that telling my students, “Hey. Before we start, I'm going to let you know I'm kind of in a bad mood. I would like to teach you what I have for you, so you can get to your work time, if that's okay. I need fifteen minutes of your time, and then the rest will be yours.” I even had a student put a timer on. (I got really good at getting what I needed to properly, and they held their end of the bargain and cooperated.) I also would remind them, “Remember there's 30 of you, and only one of me. Can you help me today? I want to teach, so you can work on your activity for today.” With all these strategies, showing openness and kindness to them, builds even more empathy, trust, and patience not only from you to them, but them to you. It builds respect in the classroom.
Teaching problem solving is the third strategy Wallar (2006) presents. This is one that I find to be lacking in curriculum and standards, at least for ELA. I think we could do more with real-world examples and problem solving. Wallar cautions that problem solving doesn't just come from worksheets and passive activities though. In fact, “teaching to facilitate investigation and successful problem resolution… is demonstrated by an ability to assimilate a variety of information, develop perspective, and understand the flow of cause and effect and the variables that interact to influence outcomes.” In other words, we must not just teach problem solving to ensure kids understand how to solve academic-based problems, but also teach to ensure students can contemplate internal and external problems related to their own experiences to help them make better decisions and judgments on their own.
Wallar continues his strategies by implementing self-management, which is a huge area of education and methods in and of itself. Self-management has been used in education to “improve behavioral and academic performance” for quite some time. One aspect of this that I diligently tried to instill in my students last year was self-awareness. For seventh graders, this area of mental wellbeing and psychological resilience can be extremely difficult to learn or keep up with. Wallar (2006) states that self-management includes “techniques such as self-monitoring, self-assessment, self-delivered rewards, and self-selected rewards… Furthermore, once self-management plans have been developed and implemented, these techniques have received favorable feedback from teachers.” We know that if students were more self-aware and could manage themselves, our classroom management would get much easier. This strategy is one I feel would need more deliberate teaching with my students.
All-in-all, on a daily basis, we do various things to better our students and their futures, not just academically but for their mental health. Just by being there and showing up, we are there for our students in a way that matters more than we know. By being present for them and actively being a part of their lives as their teachers, we are already providing impact. What we do with that impact can change and develop their minds, mental health, and psychological resilience. Most of these strategies outlined by Wallar are things you probably already know and do yourself. But understanding the importance and impact you have by communicating and displaying these things to your students can teach them and nurture them that much more, especially in regards to their mental health. The connections we sow with our kiddos, these strategies we use to nurture those relationships with them, and the positive outcomes and impacts we create with them are just as important and valuable as the content and curriculum we teach.
Resources
Wallar, R. J. (2006). Fostering Child & Adolescent Mental Health in the classroom. Sage Publications.