MAY 6-7, 2021 OPINION
through and sometimes students deny needing help when they truly need it,” Mullens said. Astronomy and earth science teacher Alison Wulff, however, has a slightly different opinion. “I feel like it would be helpful but I know with the stigmatization of mental health stuff, that student’s might not be comfortable with that information being shared. So, it might be helpful, but I think what’s more helpful would be teachers taking the time to get to know their students each as individuals and from that I feel like students would be more comfortable talking with the teacher and figuring it out that way. So it’s the student’s comfort level with it,” Wulff said. Students who struggle with their mental health can sometimes feel like a burden for expressing their feelings. That could be because it doesn’t seem like schools care about their struggles by ignoring them. Schools preach mental health awareness by doing very basic lessons telling kids to just exercise more, meditate, or quit stressing about things like their schoolwork. Schools say that as they proceed to assign multiple assignments for seven classes all due by 11:59 pm the next day. Block scheduling does give more time to
complete these assignments, but some teachers feel the need to assign more assignments now that they miss a day of class. To ease some of the stress of extra homework, history teacher Teri Daugherty offers extensions and helps to cut down on the amount of homework a student has. “I would still grade it the same way, but maybe what I’m asking of them, or requiring of them may be different. Instead of showing me six problems to show me you know it, how about you just do three, then we can talk about the rest and that generally is a pretty acceptable plan,” Daugherty said. Acknowledging that a student’s feelings are valid and real, and providing teachers with background on a student’s struggles instead of forcing them to pressure the kids into telling them exactly what’s going on with them, is beneficial to the teachers, and removes some of the pressure on the students. It’s not always easy for students to just come out and say that they have mental illnesses and that they don’t know how to deal with in the middle of class. Giving the students’ mental illnesses information to teachers will help them understand a student’s mental health and make the students feel heard.
photos by Alek Mackey
mental health? Amy Brown
Freshman Avery Mullens
“What I do [to help kids stuggling], especially in my advisory, when we have those lessons about mental health, I think it’s important to share my own journey with mental health because if I’m willing to share about it, it takes away a bit of that stigma. And it is so pervasive everyone thinks it’s an individual, I’m the only one experiencing this, I can’t can’t share it with anyone, because no one shares it. So if I share my own journey, it helps others realize they aren’t alone. And I try to get to know them one on one, so if they do need to talk”
“Absolutely, I think it would be extremely vital [to see mental illnesses on the roster] especially if there’s something that I could do to help or to facilitate some sort of change that needed to happen.”
Teri Daugherty
Alison Wulff “I feel like if you take away the opportunity to turn in the work, then you’re taking away a learning opportunity for that student, because if they aren’t going to get the points, it’s not going to change for the grade, I feel like there’s less motivation to actually do it, then they just have that gap in knowledge instead of doing the work even though it’s late and learning.”
“For a lot of times, the kids just feel overwhelmed, so a lot of times it’s simply just a reduction in work or the type of work. A lot of times they’ll be doing oral homework, come in and talk about it with me instead of writing an eight page paper. That would help a lot of kids.” “On occasion I do [have kids approach me about their mental health], but that’s more rare than me pulling them out and asking. A lot of times, kids who are struggling with mental health don’t have the confidence to say something or, and confidence may be the wrong word, the interest in telling me, or the ability. So
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