I would first like to say that I am deeply saddened and horrified that parents, communities, friends, and society have lost precious children, parents, coaches, teachers, and principles at the hands of school shooters. I am absolutely brokenhearted that students now attend school in fear and with anxiety and now associate learning environments with an absolutely devastating experience. We have no excuse.
I wish I had a quick solution, but I don’t. What I can tell you is that we need to invest more time in nurturing our young adults. When elementary students show up to school in dirty clothing, we provide them with hugs, fresh clothing, snacks, and an escape. What do we do for our young adults? We might give them an old sweatshirt from the lost and found box from 5 years ago. As a high school teacher, you can’t hug your students. So what can we do? I think too often we picture our teens as adults and we treat them as if they should be able to take care of their own needs. Children all mature at different ages, and we must nurture them according to their individual maturation needs. When we notice a student is falling behind or changing negatively, we must come together and contact counselors, parents, and other adults heavily involved in the students’ lives and try to help these young minds overcome mental illness, physical limitations, and general setbacks. Are we doing that? Are we actively and actually noticing students’ needs beyond test performance? No, we aren’t. At least not enough. We are encouraged to “stay out of it” for fear of overstepping our boundary, losing our job, and being sued.
Are we listening to our young adults? Teens use several forms to communicate from social media posts to clothing choices, behaviors, conversations, attitudes, and performance. I think when a young adult confides in anyone his or her troubles, we must have a concrete plan for options to nurture these individuals. We can’t tiptoe around reports made by students for fear of upsetting a student’s parents or interfering with freedom of speech. We are eating those words now, aren’t we? If a teen high school student reports that a student is threatening him or her via social media outside of school, teachers are asked not to interfere but to at most send the student to the counselor or tell the threatened student to talk to his or her parent or report the incident to the police. Schools have no place interfering or involving themselves with students’ social media posts, but are we sure that’s the right approach? Can we allow schools to inform parents of what is going on outside of school without getting sued? Sadly, the answer is no. Not even if it could save lives inside of school.
As high school teachers, we are told not to allow students to confide in us but to instead direct these students to a counselor. A counselor the student has perhaps never met before. I’m so sure the student is going to feel right at home…not. We see these kids every single day of the week for hours at a time. Do we need to train teachers to handle mental health? Can we certify them to at least allow a student to break down and share a struggle? Teachers attend hours of professional development a year, perhaps some of this PD time should be directed towards students’ mental health. I think the fact that teachers are not supposed to allow a troubled student to confide in them is ridiculous. We are talking about children here. Children with hearts, with needs, and with pain. For some students, a teacher is all they have.
Troubled students are going to cause trouble when they aren’t cared for. Unfortunately, sometimes this trouble is at the expense of others. I think we all need to ask ourselves what we can do to allow teachers to inform others of students’ problems inside and outside of school, especially when clear life-threatening messages are involved. Protect our young adults. Nurture these kids and lead them to freedom from overwhelming circumstances. We have to do more. We have to somehow allow teachers and schools to report without fear of losing their jobs. Instead of fighting for kids, schools cower down in fear and rightfully so considering our laws. What can we do?