At Palmer high school students are given a counseling office and counselor, but what if students need something else to feel safe and happy? Students all around the world are suffering with mental health; some people don’t like to talk about their feelings and need other coping skills, so the big question is, what can our school do to help students feel safe and happy?
Some students should get headphones for music and noise canceling. For many people music helps to calm their brains down or get their mind off of the bad things, and sometimes when a teacher says no to a student’s coping skills, music, drawing, head down, reading etc, it can affect them and either upset them more, or anger them.
Teachers need to be more open when it comes to a student’s mental health, sometimes they don’t want to share, so asking if they are okay sometimes doesn’t help, but if a student says “i feel down, i need to ____ because it helps me calm down.” At school students can feel more overwhelmed and upset because of bullying, lack of what they need, and being away from their safe place which for most people is their homes.
Ryan Smith used to work with runaways, mental health facilities and much more.
He says: “they are taking care of the students well, although i think they need more funds to make sure students have ALL of what they need”
His wife, Rebecca Smith says: “I think Palmer is doing a good job of taking care of students’ mental health. You, my child, seem to have someone to talk to and somewhere to go when you need to.”
Currently Palmer offers a counseling office and people to talk to students in need. They can do more though.
Ryan Smith says: “they should have a class teaching about mental health and all the true struggles of it, how to get better, and how to use your resources.”
This class could be run by a counselor, as an elective.
Palmer, and other schools need to create and support a healthy environment and provide what is needed. For example, Palmer could collaborate with mental health providers for students to get referrals when needed.
