 The CDC recently released the Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary and Trends Report, offering a close look at the mental health crisis affecting our country’s young people. According to the report “The percentage of students across every racial and ethnic group who felt persistently sad or hopeless increased.” This is no surprise to teachers, who see this reality in our everyday interactions with young people.
As caring teachers, we expect ourselves to be able to help our students. But even the most experienced and engaged teachers can feel overwhelmed, even helpless, when we don’t have answers for the teens in our lives who are struggling. So what do we do? I’ve written before that action is the antidote to worry - and the CDC report offers another statistic that provides a good place to start.
It states, “school connectedness, defined in this report as feeling close to people at school, has a long-lasting, protective impact for adolescents well into adulthood on almost all the behaviors and experiences included in this report.” Of those surveyed for the study, “61% of high school students felt close to people at school.” That means 39% did not.
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Research consistently shows close connections both within and outside of school are key to our happiness as humans. And the sense of belonging that comes from those connections is central in the ABCDE of Learner Needs, a tool Inspired Teaching created for teachers to reframe challenging behaviors in the context of unmet needs.
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How might we change the school experience so meeting learner needs and fostering stronger connections sits at the heart of our efforts? Here are a few ideas:
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Make homework assignments more fun and collaborative. Assign study-buddies to work through math problems; create writing assignments that require interviewing classmates; offer opportunities for students to exchange feedback on one another's work. Engage students in the work of designing a more connected homework approach.
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Make working with peers a regular feature of every class. Letting students choose their groups for school projects supports their need for autonomy; but sometimes letting the students choose means some classmates are left out, therefore undermining those students’ need for belonging. Pose this challenge to the class, and enlist their help in forming groups that offer choice, and support the classroom community.
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Ground logical consequences in shared expectations. You start the school year with a set of expectations. How are students involved in the creation of those expectations? How are those expectations upheld by the community? Hold periodic classroom discussions about expectations, and invite students to work with you on strategies for holding each other accountable in a way that melds compassion with high expectations.
In each of these ideas, students are invited to be part of both the design and the execution. That simple act is a meaningful step toward supporting young people’s wellbeing. When teachers make a point of doing things with children and teens, instead of doing things to them, we show them we value their ideas and input and see them as partners in decision-making. That’s at the heart of feeling close to the people we’re learning with and from, and to meeting one another’s needs.
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In their report, the CDC’s first action step for improving adolescent health and wellbeing is to “increase school connectedness across all grades and for all youth.” In particular, this recommendation focuses on “youth who are from racial and ethnic minority groups, who experience racism, and who identify as LGBTQ+ [who] often feel less connected at school.” This is a sound and logical first step. If we deepen our connections with students, and let learner needs inform our daily interactions, we’ll improve the school experience and wellbeing of the young people in our care, and we'll help ourselves as well.
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Hooray For Monday is an award-winning weekly publication by Center for Inspired Teaching, an independent nonprofit organization that invests in and supports teachers. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Our mission is to create radical change in the school experience – away from compliance and toward authentic engagement.
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Each week a member of the Inspired Teaching community shares something that's currently piquing their curiosity. Maybe it will spark yours too!
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 Self Care
Brady Maiden, Outreach coordinator
One thing that strikes my curiosity is self-care. Is self-care just a marketing tool? Are we as people conditioned to learn how to take care of ourselves in certain patterns that are socially acceptable? I ponder these questions because I tend to see so many of my friends and family wrapped up in this notion that self-care has to look a certain way, something that can be purchased, or consists of a heavy routine that often leads to exhaustion. On the flip side, if we don't participate in self care it leads to negativity, lack of accomplishment, and a reminder that we failed at something.
How do we stray away from these thoughts? What were people doing for their health before it was a trending topic?
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Resources for Building
School Connectedness
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Emotion Continuum
The process of creating an Emotion Continuum is a powerful opportunity to build an emotional vocabulary, while also building empathy and self-regulation tools. It builds community by helping students (and teachers!) express their own feelings and understand the feelings of others. Plus there's comfort in knowing that no matter how you feel, a word exists to describe it.
Warming Up with Mutual Respect
This series of warm-up activities activates the mind and body. And it enables students to connect and be seen and heard right as class begins.
8 Closing Activities to Build Classroom Community
Every minute of class is an opportunity to build community and deepen relationships - even those last minutes of class!
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Articles to Share with Parents
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Parents are worried about young people's mental health too. Here are some resources you can share to help your students' parents understand what to look for, and how to help:
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Tired of students asking:
When will we use this in real life?
Your classroom IS real life!
We'll help you make classroom learning engaging, and connect your content to the world beyond the classroom walls.
As humans we long to do work that is meaningful and that is just as true in school as it is in life beyond it. In this Institute, we’ll challenge ourselves to take whatever content we have to teach and infuse it with a larger purpose.
- Connect science and social studies concepts to social action.
- Connect writing and math to crafting compelling arguments for change.
Using a simple lesson planning framework and a handful of adaptable Inspired Teaching strategies and activities, you'll come away with 3 new purposeful assignments you can implement right away.
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