Some students go to school as part of their daily routine, yet some pupils attend classes just because they find refuge and peace in school more than in their homes. Particularly in Hong Kong, abusive cases at home have been an ever-present issue as the number of incidents has increased to 75% in the past two decades.
That being the case, it would be favorable to have pastoral care in schools where students feel more welcome and safe. Today’s blog presents critical steps to train educators to support mental health in schools better.
A Teacher’s Guide: Strengthening Learner’s Mental Health
As their pupils’ second parents, educators do have a massive part in helping them cope with severe struggles like mental trouble. With that said, here are some steps for teachers to understand more about what they can do:
1. Learn More About Pastoral Care
Pastoral care is the school’s effort to ensure students’ mental and emotional well-being. It is the critical basis on which learning can occur.
However, high-quality pastoral care extends to every aspect of school life to support students’ personal and academic growth. This means that these schools go well beyond a simple commitment to welfare.
Educators must then understand that a student’s development of moral character and social skills, which are crucial for later life, depends on their pastoral care at school.
2. Establish a Secure Environment in the Classroom
People who have experienced trauma may develop specific triggers that make them feel uneasy in public. By going beyond what is needed to establish a safe environment, teachers can eliminate such triggers in their classrooms.
When the academic year starts, mark every exit and cover the walls with optimistic posters. Every classroom will feel safer if children know how to leave and surround themselves with positive energy. You can read more about how teachers are creating a positive environment amidst the discipline.
3. Impart Techniques for Reducing Anxiety
Although teachers can’t be with children at home, they can offer anxiety-relieving techniques to utilize before and after school.
Kids can learn breathing methods early, but recognizing negative thoughts and redirecting them is also a highly effective strategy for dealing with stress and fear. They can use practical methods like these to maintain composure until things get better, regardless of whether specific pupils experience verbal abuse, physical threats, or other toxic settings.
As teachers support students in difficult home situations, they may remember that establishing kids’ authority over their emotions in unfavorable circumstances is a terrific approach to help them far beyond the classroom.
4. Learn How to Identify Descriptions
Children and teenagers rarely have the vocabulary to convey their feelings or describe the events at home effectively. When discussing their lives, they may employ strange terms or expressions, so paying attention to trigger words they may echo at times is essential.
Teachers may aid pupils with complex home lives by thinking outside the box. They could double their efforts in communicating their intentions to fully understand what their learners deal with outside of school and provide them with the best care possible.
5. Commit to Checking Them Constantly
Some students might have trouble trusting adults since they’ve historically had bad experiences with older people. Checking in with children is an effective way for educators to boost their support for struggling pupils at home, even though they will feel more comfortable speaking with their teachers later.
Assure them you care about how they are doing and urge them to converse about anything at any time. They will learn that they can always rely on their teacher for support if you start conversations with them frequently.
Educators might watch for depression symptoms, including constant sadness or social isolation. They can indicate a more severe issue that the student hesitates to address but still wants assistance from a school psychologist.
6. Promote Healthy Relationships
Unknowingly, toxic individuals teach children that all relationships resemble the ones they have at home. It is the responsibility of teachers to include illustrations of positive interactions in textbook questions or reading assignments.
Do encourage students to spot undesirable traits in their future friends and at home. As they get older, they can end the cycle of maltreatment. This straightforward advice is a great place to start for teachers who wish to assist kids who live in challenging circumstances.
Integrating Mental Health Promotion in Schools
Numerous schools have already started incorporating mental health awareness and planning into their curricula and extracurricular programs. Moreover, a place that supports mental health is secure, welcoming, and empowering.
Mental health can be included in the curriculum of school activities by:
- Recognizing coordinated health promotion as a top priority in strategic planning.
- Assessing opportunities for cross-curricular approaches to integrated mental health teaching and learning as part of school well-being team meetings.
- Developing lesson plans and distributing material that connects mental health to other health-related activities; could involve:
- Examining the impact of exercise and a balanced diet on mental health.
- Explaining how mental illness and drug use are related and how mental illness and other substance use are related.
- Evaluating the connection between mental health and body image.
Conclusion
Teachers are responsible for a lot of things. Nothing is more crucial to a teacher’s job than supporting pupils’ emotional health. Additionally, students benefit from instructors who are understanding of their problems and supportive of them. Thus, it is vital to fully grasp how to support mental health in schools.
