Education, Mental Health and Well-Being

Students are in a persistent state of alarm

Helping kids to understand when they need to take a break and sharing affirmations can be helpful

Personalized, one-on-one, interest-based conversations between student and teacher have been shown to improve overall student behaviour

A personal journal can help students to release anxiety in a private and secure way, to be shared if necessary

Ontario has an average of 1 full-time guidance teacher per almost 400 high school students

As of January 2018, 14 % of elementary schools have a guidance counselor, particularly troubling for those schools that teach grades 7 and 8

Many people outside of education seem to assume that schools have the necessary resources to deal with the increasing mental health needs of students - this is not the case

Teaching about mental health is not consistent within Canadian schools - in many cases, it's not mandatory

Students need to learn to identify and manage emotions in younger grades, move to learning about resiliency as they get older, and how to understand what they're going through and how to manage it, if help is needed, etc.

Students need to consider school a safe space for them, and teachers need to foster that environment by genuinely paying attention to the kids