Only by training teachers to combat their student’s failing mental health can we establish a future workforce who can manage their own wellbeing.
The modern world presents ample reasons for children and vulnerable people to fear society. IT is up to educational employers to train the teaching staff to support and facilitate this fear, to treat it at source. If your student grow up like the Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations did, they won’t receive effective training for the management of their own mental health long term. This foundation for future happiness must be a teacher’s responsibility from the first years of schooling. Without it, we see global rates of depression and anxiety return to the levels they were pre Gen Z.
Wellbeing in Schools must take a Sustainable Approach
It is one thing to teach our educators about their own mental wellness, but Education Training needs to teach them how to look out for their charges, too. Training teachers to support a student’s mental wellness starts with a foundational belief that it must be protected. Like everything, a child starts out with a fresh outlook on life that includes a positive mental attitude. Part of safeguarding our charges is ensuring the things that threaten the child’s positivity are spotted and dealt with in a positive way, early on in their progression. At the current rate, scientists estimate 1 in 6 children suffer from a mental illness.
Think of a student like a seedling. If a branch from an older tree falls on them, they could well grow up bending under that weight. If we don’t show them how to effectively remove that weight in a healthy way, they grow into adults who are incapable of managing their own mental health. In this way, mental wellness training for teachers in schools should be as essential as mathematics and communication skills.
To create a sustainable, long-lasting plan that helps students fight back against negative mental wellbeing, we need to take a sustainable approach. This means educating the child on how to self-manage their potential issues before they cause stilted growth. This starts with our teaching staff. But how?
The UK Department of Education Could Help
As recently as May 2022, the UK Department of Education announced plans which included increasing funding from £3 million to £10 million to help schools combat mental ill-health in children. This funding will go some of the way towards helping schools in England and Wales to develop training courses specifically aimed at teachers who want to help prevent ill health in children. The funding will provide resources which ought to help the kids of the UK develop healthier coping tactics in future. However, sceptics say that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
To completely turn the tables on mental illness in our kids, we need a base level approach. We need to change the entire curriculum, across the board. Our kids need to learn from the first day of school, that it’s OK to be sad, to feel scared, or to cry. They need to know above all else that we are here to support them, especially if they feel out of sorts. Change has to start now, with the curriculum, for us to look back on suicide in young adults as a memory, not an everyday occurrence.
