Mental Health Literacy and Stress Management in the Classroom

Dear Followers,

I am very passionate about this blog and want to continue posting! I came across a great Canadian educational blog by Paul W. Bennett. It is called Educhatter and offers a lot of great information and resources for teachers. One particular post really stood out to me, as I am very passionate about mental health awareness and ways to manage stress and anxiety in the classroom. As a student in high school, I was a very shy, introverted kid who did not participate in class discussions and often missed out on opportunities to showcase my true abilities. This was because I had high levels of stress and anxiety caused by school, but also issues I carried with me from home and outside school activities. According to the Canadian Coalition for Children and Youth Mental Health, the mental health of students is the “number one issue facing schools today” (Whitley, 2012, p., 56).
 Now that I am a prospective teacher, it is really important to me that I incorporate mental health literacy into my classrooms and help students manage their stress and anxiety.

Schools themselves are a source of stress for many students. To name a few, bullying, academic expectations and peer pressure are common igniters of stress and anxiety in youth. Educhatter had a great post titled Kids and Stress: Are Kids more "Stressed" today - and if so why?.
As his post illustrates, the classroom climate consist of Warriors but also Worriers and teachers are responsible for accommodating for all the various needs and abilities that make up the classroom. Paul's blog offered an article from the Globe and Mail that discusses how the Toronto District School Board implemented Mindfulness meditation practices into their classrooms to help students manage stress. Meditation is a great way to reduce stress and allows students to clear their heads, relax their bodies and focus on their breathing.


Students should be educated on what mental health disorders are and how meditation can help counteract these issues. As Skre (2003) illustrates, “Stigma attached to mental illness is the main obstacle to provision of care for mental health problems”(p.2), and because of this stigma, only 1 in 5 children suffering from a mental health issue seek the treatment they require (Whitley, 2012). Therefore, it is extremely important as educators that we work to break the stigma around mental health disorders by appropriately educating our students and incorporating mental health literacy into every and any curriculum. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw71zanwMnY

The above video illustrates the scientific benefits of meditation and how meditating can help counteract stress, anxiety and even depression. 

A way to incorporate meditation into the classroom is a simple breathing activity. This can be a great way to begin your lesson in order to calm students down, especially after a lunch period or first thing in the morning. Students are asked to close their eyes, take deep breaths in and out and simply focus on their breathing. Stretching is another activity that is really beneficial and can help students with high energy release that energy so they are ready to learn. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeXuf7sOpzA

The above video illustrates a teacher performing a group meditation with her class through the form of yoga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCqmFpKiLD0

This video outlines the benefits of incorporating meditation practices into schools. 

Lastly, as Paul's post illustrates, not all stress is bad and it is important to educate students about this as well. In a CBC Interview with Dr. Stan Kutcher, he laments: 

“Stress is useful for us, it helps the body tune itself, it is a method by which we learn how to adapt to our environment either by changing ourselves or by changing our environment.  There is good stress, which is positive, it helps kids learn how to pick themselves up and dust themselves off, and start all over again. That’s part of resilience.  That’s part of learning how to deal with life, but sometimes there’s also stress that is bad for you and part of the deal is understanding which is which.” 

Thank you for reading my post and I hope it was educational! 

With every good wish, 

Miss Roberts 

Work Cited 

 Skre, I. (2013). A school intervention for mental health literacy in adolescents: Effects of a non-randomized cluster controlled trial. BMC Public Health, 1-16.

 Whitley, J. (2012). Promoting Mental Health Literacy Among Educators: Critical in School-Based Prevention and Intervention. Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 56-70.