Within Talk with Class, a program on mental health and wellbeing at school, we organised a Round Table with all the groups that are part of the school community: students, teachers, principals, specialists and parents. We asked ourselves: how to create a school with an atmosphere that supports wellbeing? What can be done here and now to support it?
The following article is a story based on what young people told us during the meeting.
The Round Table was held on May 18th and 25th, 2021.
What do young people need to feel well and safe at school? Read what we were told during the Round Table on Mental Health.
There has been a lot of talk going on about mental health in the pandemic, also in our Foundation. We have been looking closely into the condition of the young and searching for solutions helpful in building a supporting school environment.
In May we sat around a virtual round table. Principals, teachers, parents, mental health experts and young people were invited into the discussion. It was a very important experience for us and now we know for sure: nothing about youth without youth. Read what they have told us.
Creating reality
In order to feel good you need to have self-agency , you need to feel you have the power to introduce change. This role can be fulfilled by school councils. However, they usually work only on a superficial level: engage only a few, and have a mostly representative function (for example, during school official events). It pays off to teach (both students and teachers) how to create and support the school council, so that the actions of young people are not fictional but real and important, so that the young people can really feel that they are changing the reality (look into the Zwolnieni z Teorii project).
The feeling of self-agency is worth restoring on the very basic level: in a conversation about how the students feel during the pandemic; in creating a strategy of building well-being in a classroom; by engaging the students and letting them decide. Students want to feel important: they need to know that their voices are valued, and that their problems are heard and seen instead of being banalised and belittled – which happens a lot. On a young person’s scale, with his or her perspective, with the baggage of experience that is carried by each and every one of them, these problems weigh the same amount as our problems.
The tough art of discussing emotions
We want the young people to talk with us, while often we are unable to hold a valuable conversation. Young people feel the need for the teachers to strengthen their ability to discuss, especially to talk about emotions andt topics concerning mental health crises.
The role of school psychologist and pedagogue is also important. It isn’t only about their presence (as there are a few of them in Polish schools) but also about integrating the specialist in the school community and building an atmosphere of trust around him or her. Only when the students understand what exactly is the psychologist or the pedagogue’s job, and only when they know that school specialists are not here to punish students for doing something wrong but to help and support, we can introduce real change. Terms of confidentiality are important as well. Students need to know which information will stay in the office and which will be given to the parents and/or the headmaster.
At school we often take a point of view of routine and habits. A test sheet without answers is a reason for reprimand. But what if we took the case from a different, more humanly angle? What if it was treated as a signal that something bad might be happening? What if the students were asked about what happened? Maybe a familiar is in a hospital and the student cannot focus on the test because of stress around the incident. It is always worth asking.
Not to worry the adults
Parents usually feel that they are not enough and, faced with problems, they react with sadness/ being offended / denial. They are unable to help, because they concentrate on themselves when, after all, young people’s problems are caused not only by them. Adults are not always able to react with empathy, as remorse switches on. Kids won’t tell adults about their problems if it will sadden the adult and make him or her blame themselves. Such reactions are an additional burden for the child, as they have to deal with both theirs and parent’s emotions. And children are trying to protect their parents from suffering.
The road to real understanding comes from listening and showing true interest. If adults learn that in a situation tough for the child, they shouldn’t put themselves first, a lot of things will become easier. Kids care for us, the adults, and they want us to learn how to deal with our own emotions. They don’t want us to be perfect, they prefer an imperfect parent who knows when and how to reach out for help. That’s why it is important for the parent, caretaker or a teacher to work on their own emotional development.
It starts from well-being
Well-being is a term used often nowadays, but in a context of school it is usually seen as something additional, something separate from everyday duty, an “extra”. Meanwhile, young people see well-being as a basic thing. How do they understand it?
First of all: feeling safe. Students want to feel safe and protected, they want to know that teachers are on their side. This comfort is crucial when it comes to reacting in difficult situations (mobbing, discrimination, favouring certain students, sexual assault). In schools those problems are often ignored, adults seem to pretend that it never happened, facts are denied in the name of status quo and/or it is assumed at the very beginning that the student’s version may be belittled. Young people need friendly mechanisms that let them openly talk about things that are tough. This is what safety means to them. The everyday comfort of spending time in school is something that we don’t measure with rankings.
Besides, students pay for their schools winning high positions in rankings based on results: many times their feeling of safety and their mental well-being suffers under huge pressure. A grade doesn’t say anything about the true, complex human being. The reward and punishment system objectifies the young.
There are a lot of initiatives where the young support the young, offer help ad hoc, psychoeducate, create materials to work with. Unfortunately, every initiative is led by someone who has experienced a crisis and didn’t get necessary help. The young are trying to fill this void and help those who were failed by adults. What does it say about us?
This text is based on the conversations with young people participating in the Round Table on mental health, organised by the School with Class Foundation. The meeting was attended by:
Agata Guza – this year’s high school graduate of High School No. 2 in Sopot, editor in „Globalna Wioska”. Youth Ambassador of the Class of Covid 19 of the Varkey Foundation, co-founder of the Kenga Edukacja initiative.
Paulina Matuszewska – co-creator of the Idź pobiegaj! social campaign, which fights against the stigma of mental health in an unusual and ironic way.
Maja Reda – co-founder of the School 2.0 initiative, vice-president of the 12th term of the Youth City Council of Oleśnica town. .
Mikołaj Wolanin – Marshal of the Parliament of Children and Youth (2017), president and founder of the Rights of the Student foundation.
Angelika Fredrich – the founder of the Teenage Asylum, an initiative aimed at the mental health of teenagers, a first-year student of psychology at the SWPS University, won with anorexia.
Text editing: Marta Puciłowska and Karolina Wysocka
The translation of the article from Polish by Łucja Matuszak