15th February 2019

Being a teacher is not at all an easy job to do so. It is exhausting and complicated, and you want time to spend with your families and sporadic time for yourselves too. But have you ever thought that your students also need time? They are load up with homework after their demanding seven hours of constant focus. They have little or sometimes no break time at all. Yes, teachers push them for their own benefits but among all these situations, aren’t we forgetting the fact that there are some serious wrong steps taken by the students during their career and student life?

Why are we weakening students with psychological and mental health concerns?

Situation: Like any other day, you entered your classroom and found that your students are most stressed than ever! Unable to concentrate! Reasons may be because of study pressure, assignments, homework and many more. BUT...you can help them! You can help them to lead a stress free life, you can help them in moulding their nature, and you can help them in dealing with their mental issues.  You see your students for six and a half or maybe around seven hours a day where you teach them, emotionally train them and often making them to feel safe.

Here are a few techniques through which you can aid them:
 

1. TALK and Discuss: Before anything, you need to understand the fact that discussing is very much needed. Talk with them and discuss their problems or sometimes maybe concerns. Try to give them a place where they can freely talk about their issues, their queries, their apprehensions everything. Listen to them and try to comprehend their issues by aiding them to find a solution for that. Try to understand their stress and fretfulness.
    
2. Option for a mental health lead: Well, if it is possible then try to appoint an expert as he/she will be the best one to guide them and to deal with them. They generally work with primary mental health professionals and train teachers to deal with various mental health conditions. You can arrange some special sessions for your students so that they can express themselves without stinting.
    
3. Let your students know: Don’t be hesitant or afraid of telling your students about mental health. Just like it is very much important for adults to know and understand to deal with mental health, in the same way, it is essential for young people to have a clear knowledge on mental health. Let them know where they can go for support if they are concerned about themselves, their friends, or classmates.
    
4. Discuss learning strategies: Try to implement new and unique teaching strategies in order of teaching young learners as they like changes! Generally, the problem which the young learners face is they don’t know how to study even though they sit in classroom. Just sitting, sometimes reading and taking notes in class won’t help them. Discuss the significance of planned breaks and help them to find out how to study in a way that works for them. How?  By preparing lessons plans, designing classroom activities, arranging classes out of the four walls and many more teaching techniques.
    
5. Include Parents: YES, include your students’ parents to develop the mental health of your students. Why? Because they see their behaviour at home which you might not be seeing in class. Keep an open line of regular communication with parents to avoid misconstructions.

Some more suggestions:

• Try to find out the good among your students and commend it.
• Arrange a training session for all your staff in mental health.
• Break your tasks into smaller parts.
• Try to encourage physical activity among your students.
• Persuade your responsibility and follow-through your students.

Knowing the fact about mental health is still very misapprehended and unspoken in our society. As an upshot, students suffer in silence frequently. They sometimes called as “crazy” or “foolish” if they come forward and discuss it. Different teaching learning courses like the teacher training course, train the teaching professionals to deal with all the learning concerns and issues by developing the mental health of the students.