Everyone needs a safe, welcoming environment to feel their best. It’s especially important in school environments because students must rely on teachers and administrators to advocate for their needs. Providing physical safety is essential, but schools must also strive to protect each child’s mental health. These are a few ways school leaders can help kids feel safe every day.
Understand Common Safety Concerns
Anyone trying to find a solution must start with the challenge at hand. These are some of the most common issues concerning student safety that school leaders must understand to find practical solutions.
Emergency Events
Students experience many kinds of emergency events between kindergarten and graduation. Weather events like tornadoes, fires and earthquakes disrupt classrooms around the world. School shootings are an unfortunate reality as well, even if they don’t happen in every grade school.
Young people are aware of these threats and their lack of ability to stop them. No one can control the weather or other people. Students live with the stress of possibly experiencing these physical threats, resulting in ongoing mental health challenges like anxiety, stress and depression.
Bullying
Kids picking on each other is a common occurrence, but bullying is a different matter. Students who get verbally, emotionally, or physically bullied are nearly three times more likely to develop depression during and after the bully’s influence on their life.
Numerous factors make bullying such a mental health concern for kids. In addition to developing depression and anxiety, their self-esteem erodes. They might wonder what’s wrong with them because the bully focuses on them instead of someone else. Children could also lose their sense of self-worth if they know school administrators won’t do anything to stop the harmful interactions.
Sometimes, school leaders can’t do anything about bullying. It might happen primarily online or in settings where overworked staff members can’t always keep an eye on everyone. It’s crucial to strive for a positive environment to minimize these occurrences in school buildings, and foster greater trust between students and staff.
Building Construction
Older school buildings may not get necessary repairs due to insufficient school funding, which compromises the physical and mental health of anyone attending that school. Crumbling infrastructure could risk collapses or expose everyone to harmful materials like asbestos. Accessibility modifications might not get repaired, forcing students to use broken handrails or cracked wheelchair ramps that make their lives more challenging.
Students might not feel like they matter when these repairs risk their long-term safety. This is especially concerning for students with disabilities because they might believe administrators don’t care enough about helping them achieve equal access to a safe, accessible education.
How School Leaders Can Improve All Aspects of Student Safety
There are numerous ways leaders can help students feel safe every day. Consider these active and preventative measures to make your school a better environment for everyone.
Communicate Emergency Event Resources
Students and staff undergo standard emergency event procedures each semester. Drills for fires, tornados and active shooters ensure everyone knows how to protect themselves. Unfortunately, they often communicate that students are exclusively responsible for their safety. They might think school administrators don’t have any other measures in place to protect them, eroding their self-worth while increasing their anxiety.
Administrators and teachers should communicate available safety measures whenever they discuss or enact safety drills. The school is required to have standardized safety doors that are regularly tested for safety and comply with the standards of the National Fire Protection Association. Fire extinguishers and sprinklers won’t be the only resources keeping students safe if a fire occurs, ensuring each child faces less risk.
Other measures like enhanced classroom door locks for active shooter events and wind-proof windows in tornado-prone regions would ease each student’s anxiety by showing how the school protects them outside of drill procedures.
Foster Safety for Every Student’s Identity
Any school administrator can say they have a no-tolerance policy for discrimination on campus, but students need to see that actively enforced. Otherwise, they’ll learn that their race, gender, sexuality, religion or other parts of their identity increase their risk of long-term bullying when they enter school doors.
Administrators and teachers should make their environment welcoming with things like custom posters and identity-confirming events like cultural celebrations. Anything they say to students should affirm each of their identities so there’s mutual respect. When discrimination occurs either by a student or an adult, the affected kids will know there are adults they can trust to fix the problem.
Help Teachers Share Workloads
School districts often don’t get adequate funding, so there’s only so much administrators can do to help teachers. Unfortunately, overbearing workloads prevent educators from giving their full time and energy to watching their students. Bullying or external signs of mental health problems might go unnoticed or not dealt with because teachers are already overworked.
Those in leadership positions can meet with teachers regularly to discuss how they’re doing. Each meeting becomes an opportunity to problem-solve together. Everyone could try shifting responsibilities to find a better balance for grading, lesson planning or communicating with parents. If teachers have more energy and focus for their students, they’ll more quickly spot signs of those needing mental health assistance.
Provide Mental Health Days
Students and teachers get a limited number of sick days each school year. It’s crucial for everyone to save those days for when the flu season inevitably begins, but that only takes their physical health into consideration. Mental health days are equally as important.
School leaders can provide a set amount of mental health days to everyone on campus in addition to sick days to solve this issue. Although personal factors may influence who can use them, having those days available shows the school cares for each person’s comprehensive well-being. It makes students feel safe because they know their mental health matters as much as their grades and attendance.
Create Counseling Opportunities
Limited funding makes hiring a therapist or social worker for each school challenging, if not impossible. Districts often share a limited number of counselors or social workers to support their students’ mental health needs. If each school’s administrators strive to improve their counseling availability, they can try various schedules to find one that works best for everyone.
- Administrators can also increase their communication about mental health resources with students and their parents. They might hang posters or send emails explaining how people can connect with affordable therapists through county or state programs. Discounted therapy programs providing counseling at sliding-scale hourly rates might also help kids find resources outside of school. Communication is a valuable way to help students, especially in schools limited by minimal funding.
Train Teachers in Mental Health Recognition Strategies
Teachers are already doing their best with oversized classrooms and minimal funding. They can’t double as licensed mental health professionals, but they can receive training to recognize signs of concerning mental health situations.
Routine staff training could include recommendations to watch for occurrences like formerly energetic students becoming withdrawn, listening for negative self-talk and watching for behavioral changes over time. When concerns arise, teachers should learn how to address them with parents. It’s also vital that teachers know when to report problems as well, since some parents may be the cause of their child’s eroding mental health.
Serve Nutritious Meals
School breakfasts and lunches are sometimes the only reliable meals children can access. Limited funding for school lunch programs and restrictions in federal reimbursements make it challenging to serve nutritious food daily. Those in leadership positions can meet with cafeteria staff to brainstorm menu changes that work within their budget when administrators aren’t advocating for more funding.
Swapping options like fresh vegetables with canned vegetables would prevent financial loss by reducing food waste. Students would still get the nutrients they need without food rotting in the back of cafeteria refrigerators. Fortified foods would boost the nutritional profiles of options like milk and wheat products.
Any new ideas or budget-friendly upgrades increasing each student’s daily nutrient intake protect their mental health. Children who get well-rounded meals get the health boost their bodies need to strengthen their minds and keep up with growth spurts. It’s a vital strategy school leaders can use to protect kids in a way young people might not ever think about.
Establish Semester Growth Check-Ins
Individual check-ins are invaluable ways to help students feel safe. They establish personal connections between teachers and their students. When teachers take time out of their day to speak with each kid, those young people feel seen and valued.
Check-in conversations encourage students to consider personal growth goals to set for themselves. They could reflect on previous targets to chart their progress as well. Children will know they’re in a safe space to try things, make mistakes and learn from their experiences. As they work toward personal goals set during semesterly check-ins, they’ll strengthen their mental health by feeling empowered to grow.
Protect Each Student’s Physical and Mental Health Equally
The physical and mental health of each student is crucial. School leaders can help them feel safe by focusing on solutions to protect both aspects of each young person’s academic experience. Trying new ideas by working together will transform each school into an environment where students know they can focus on their personal growth, academic achievements and growing social skills.
