Student Mental Health - Tumblr Posts
This is a very random thing to be seeing as you doom scroll through Tumblr but I wanna say it.
What the fuck is happening in schools in terms of student mental health?
More under the cut because this is pretty long by my standards.
I'm speaking from personal experience when I say that schools need to work on how they support their students' mental health - especially secondary schools in the UK. I've seen teachers yelling at already visibly distressed students many times. I hate that I need to say it but overwhelming an already overwhelmed person doesn't make them any less overwhelmed.
I live roughly 3 miles from my school. As a result, I wear trainers instead of school shoes because they literally slice my feet open. Seriously, I have ended up in hospital after my school shoe cut my foot open and it got infected. Trainers aren't part of the uniform policy meaning I'm not allowed to wear them. I managed to get around this by getting a note from the hospital. The unspoken term and condition of doctor's notes in the eyes of teachers is that as soon as that note "expires" everything you've previously argued means nothing. I found this out the hard way. Once my note had apparently run out, I had teachers trying to force me to wear shitty school shoes.
Same goes for timeout passes. The timeout pass is a card that you show the teacher to tell them that you are allowed to take 5-15 mins out of lesson for whatever reason. Every card lasts until the end of that school year. When you come back after summer, you're fucked. Getting another timeout pass is so difficult because teachers always assume students are attention seeking. Unless you literally break down right before the teacher's eyes, your mental health doesn't matter. Even then there's no promise that you'll be taken seriously. Assuming you eventually get your timeout pass, teachers still feel the need to argue with you about it.
To make this even worse, my school is getting rid of timeout passes and all support outside of lesson in favour of putting up little sheets in all classrooms saying "how to help yourself". How the fuck I'm supposed to see that from the back of the room I don't know. Students are human beings not just numbers and letters on a report card. That's something I feel schools tend to forget. They say they want their students to do well but that's academically not emotionally.
To all students who have been brushed aside by those employed to support them, I'm sorry. You deserve better and your mental health matters inside and outside education.