I was talking to our Head of Counseling yesterday, and she can’t keep up. We even have a new counselor on staff this year, and three weeks in, her caseload is at full capacity. I don’t need to tell you about the teenage mental health crisis, or the deteriorating ability of our students to do school. You don’t need to see stats. You see the mess sprawling out in front of you every day. With the kid who runs out of orientation because she can’t handle being around people for the first time in months (yes, this happened at my school). Or the kid in a hospital because she can’t handle the pressure of performing after so many months behind a screen (yes, this also happened).
It was bad enough before the pandemic. But then you strip away any reserves, any safety net, any sense of stability, and you’ve got nowhere to go when the stress and sadness seep in. So the stress turns to anxiety and panic. And the sadness turns to hopelessness and depression.
And let’s be honest, it’s not like this is just affecting the kids. About 20 teachers left my school last year, some never to teach again. This is generational upheaval, and no one quite knows what it will look like in five years or twenty years.
I’m going to assume you’re a caring, committed educator who desperately wants to help your kids cope. And that you’re also scared senseless by the enormity of this.
All I can say is that I keep practicing mindfulness with kids, and they keep asking for more. I could write a whole other post on what it does, or why it helps. But right now, I don’t think that matters much. It’s enough to say that the kids need this, we need this, and over time, it works. It’s not a silver bullet. It won’t pull anyone off the ledge. But it will slow things down for them, and give them a place to chill. That, to me, seems pretty important right now.
Today one of my students thanked me after class and then told me that he loves drinking gourmet coffee, and he thinks mindfulness is a lot like that. You just let the various sensations trickle down through your body as you revel in the taste and smell. I don’t even like coffee, but it seems like he’s onto something.
This practice is as simple as it gets. It’s a version of a body scan. Why? It shifts our attention away from the screaming of our mind, the tumult of our emotions, and into the presence of our body. I’ve been coming back to it a lot lately, because sometimes, simple is good. It’s for your students, it’s for you, it’s for anyone who needs it. You just let the various sensations trickle down through your body.
If you'd like more practices like this, enter your email in the box below and you'll automatically receive a set of five-minute mindfulness practices to use in your class. Each one comes with a few Google slides to set the stage, and then an audio file of the practice. It also includes reflection questions for after the practice.
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