The children in any classroom are more than just students, and while an ideal world would see that the controlled safety of a school room would be enough to guarantee good outcomes, the reality is more complicated.
If a student has a lot going on at home, or if they are feeling sad, stressed, or worried, it will bleed into their schoolwork.
In this article, we take a look at how a student’s overall wellness can shape their educational experience.
What Do We Mean By Wellness?
Wellness can mean different things. At the most fundamental level, it can include food security, healthy habits, adequate shelter, and a stable home environment.
It can also refer to things like their ability to do schoolwork outside the home. Do they have external responsibilities that interfere with their ability to participate?
Do they lack internet at home? Are they unable to regularly get to school on time? These are all factors that can have a significant impact on schooling.
Inadequate conditions can create literal obstacles to homework completion. It can also create circumstances within which it is difficult to thrive.
Students who are living in a state of generalized stress and anxiety may simply not have the bandwidth to succeed academically with any consistency.
While no school action can completely eliminate stress from student lives, there are lots of things that can be done to help improve their chances of success.
In the next few headings, we will take a look at what schools can do about these circumstances.
Providing More Food Security
Schools actually do quite a lot to help facilitate food security. While there are always going to be limits to what they can do, many will provide free breakfast and lunch to students living in households below a certain income threshold.
Some schools give everyone free breakfast and lunch, provided enough of the student body population meets that threshold.
Many will provide snacks throughout the day, and some will even have meal programs to ensure that the child is able to access food outside of school as well.
These solutions are imperfect. They will sometimes require parental involvement for filling out the right paperwork, collecting support resources, and so on. But it’s ultimately a good way to help ensure that kids have what they need.
Truancy
Truancy is not necessarily something that many families think of fondly, but it is an important element of ensuring that people do well in school.
Attendance is one of the most significant indicators of overall educational outcomes. It’s often tied to other issues at home.
Truancy officers help enforce attendance policies and at least hopefully, ensure that kids get to school more regularly.
Homework Clubs
Homework clubs may not sound like anyone’s favorite extracurricular. Probably they are not. These opportunities are designed to ensure that kids have a safe and stable place where they can complete schoolwork by allowing them to work out of the school library or a teacher’s classroom for an hour or so after school.
They accomplish several things:
- They ensure that the work gets done. Kids can fall behind rapidly if they aren’t completing their homework. Homework clubs are first and foremost designed to ensure that everyone stays on track.
- They have access to the resources they need. Some kids don’t have Wi-Fi or even a quiet room to work out of. Homework clubs guarantee that they’ll have all of the basics required, including sometimes a little bit of help from a teacher.
- It provides a little extra stability. Some kids just need a place to go for a little while after school. The reasons vary, but that need is seen universally at schools all across the country. Homework clubs give just a little bit of extra safety and stability to kids who, for whatever reason, don’t want to go home at the end of the day.
Many schools will even arrange transportation since homework clubs ensure missing the typical bus route.
Mental Health Resources
Possibly more important than any of the other factors that we’ve described up until this point, many schools will provide their students with mental health resources.
This is pretty much universally available to some extent, but the level of support will vary based primarily on the school’s resources.
At minimum, most school districts will have at least one school psychologist and one social worker.
Some schools will have their own, though it’s more common to share these resources across multiple buildings.
The school psychologist and social worker will intervene in acute mental health flare-ups. They will also often push into classrooms to teach about social-emotional wellness and to provide students with more generalized coping mechanisms for the stresses and pressures of school and everyday life.
School psychologists, counselors, and social workers are not necessarily able to provide clinical-level support the way a personal psychiatrist would.
It’s not many meetings, many times a month for an extended period, but they will do regular check-ins to help ensure that the kids are safe at home and that they can be connected with resources they need.
Teachers Make the Biggest Difference of All
Ultimately, there’s no better source of consistency and stability than the teacher. All of the other resources we’ve described above are important, but even the most devoted social worker or school psychologist will only spend a select few moments with the kids on their caseload per week.
Teachers see them more than their parents do.
The processes we described in the headings above are important. They won’t solve every problem a student can have. Unfortunately, nothing can. However, by showing up every day and giving it their all, teachers maximize their potential outcomes.
Children are in an incredibly unique position. On the one hand, their potential is almost unlimited.
They can do anything and be anyone. On the other hand, they are the most vulnerable humans on the planet. They only have what we give them.
It’s this knowledge that makes the job of an educator both high-pressure and incredibly impactful.
Source link
#Connection #Student #Wellness #LongTerm #Outcomes
