There is so much on a teacher's plate right now that the thought of adding more can be overwhelming. When it comes to supporting student's mental health it should never stress out the teacher -- that kinda defeats the whole point! Here are 5 ways you can introduce and support your student's mental health that can be implemented as soon as tomorrow!

1.) Brain Breaks, Movement Breaks, Stand and Stretch

A brain break is any activity that takes you away from hard mental work and allows your brain and body to reset. For a more comprehensive list of brain breaks I encourage you to take a look at the weareteachers.com blog post with plenty of great ideas. In my experience watching a quick funny video (always pre-screen!) or just having students collectively take a deep breath is super helpful. Not only can it help learning sink in, but it also encourages the importance of taking breaks to support mental health. We are not robots and we can't expect our students to be either!

Brain breaks can also include opportunities for movement (a movement break) like going for a walk or even walking around the classroom. When planning lessons look for ways to include movement including partner work, flexible seating or doing gallery walks. For specific students struggling, running teacher errands can help them "move out" any emotions they may be harboring passively so that they can return to the classroom ready to learn. 

This can also be as simple as having students stand up and stretch. A good rule of thumb I always followed was that a student's age determines how long they can focus and absorb material. For example, a 15 year old can only focus for about 15 minutes. If you've been straight lecturing for 15 minutes allow a short stand and stretch break.  

2.) Creative Activities

No teacher I know would ever want to only teach out of a book and follow a strict curriculum. We teach because we enjoy the opportunity to be creative! Students enjoy being creative too and it can support and encourage their mental health. Find ways to incorporate creativity into your lessons. 

I taught Math for 7 years and found it tough to include this, but whenever possible I had my students create "mini posters" (usually on pieces of computer paper) of topics we were learning about. Students enjoyed the opportunity to be creative and I always found it to be a good opportunity to connect and build relationships with students. This can be applied to any subject. Book reports, projects and presentations can also be done to foster creativity and better mental well-being in students.

3.) Self-care Activities

Practice self-care. It's a phrase we've heard from our administrators while attending a meeting that could've been an email. Common self-care activities for adults and teens include exercising, journaling and meditation. Unless you are a PE Teacher exercise may be a little difficult, but journaling and meditation can be easily introduced into any classroom.

Journaling can help reduce stress, process difficult emotions, and help students learn how to self-reflect. Journaling makes the most sense in an ELA, English or Reading classroom. It can be done for Bellwork, as it's own individual assignment or as an activity to be done when your students have finished another assignment early. It also makes sense in a Social Studies classroom and can even be aligned with standards or benchmarks tied to primary and secondary sources. In PE, a fitness journal can help students explore how exercise makes them feel and visually show progress. Math is the most challenging to implement a journaling activity but I haven't had a single student not jump for extra credit in Math. Isn't Admin also always pushing for "cross-curriculum" or "integrated" activities? To get started with some prompts click the link below.

Journaling prompts: https://playtivities.com/mindful-journal-prompts-for-teens/

Meditation can also be useful. Many of the guided meditations on YouTube are geared towards adults or younger kids and are a little long. Being that high school classes tend to only have 45-55 minutes time is of the essence. Meditation can be thought of as simple breathing exercises. If you have a few extra minutes you can teach your students how to do "box breathing" which requires breathing in for 4 seconds, holding that breath for 4 seconds and breathing out for 4 seconds, holding that exhale for 4 seconds and then restarting that same process. Students may find this to be a little awkward so I highly recommend putting on a YouTube Aquarium. My favorite is linked below and yes, it's music from Finding Nemo. My students have loved this and I've also used it as an incentive and put it on during independent work time.

Meditation video: youtu.be/JxiB4y43uN8?si=VP6EaEv5OIEQdFmO or search "meditation aquarium" on YouTube

Self-care activities: www.talkspace.com/blog/self-care-for-teens/

4.) Emotional Regulation Worksheets

If you are a teacher that has exclusively taught high school you know that teaching study skills, reading skills or time management skills go students is very common. Emotional regulation skills can also be taught! Click the link below to view a variety of worksheets that can be printed and used in any classroom. I recommend implementing them as "finished early" activities or for extra credit. 

Worksheets: https://www.psychologytools.com/professional/techniques/affect-regulation/ 

5.) Mood Tracker Bellwork

A mood tracker is a template of squares (one for each day) where students can assign a color to an emotion and then each day check in with themselves by shading in that day's box with the color that most aligns with their emotion. For example sad could be blue, happy yellow, angry red, and so on. Giving your students mood trackers and time to shade them in can help them explore their emotions daily. It can also help them track trends with their emotions and reflect on how they themselves can improve their emotional well-being. For example if they notice that they are sad mutliple days in a row they may need to reach out to their friends or family for support. This activity is suggested to be implemented during bellwork time or at the end of each class. Use the free template below to get your students started.

Mood tracker template: https://www.mapleplanners.com/download/daily-mood-tracker

Being a teenager at any point in time is tough. In today's world it comes with it's own unique set of challenges that can unfortunately lead to poor mental health. I hope you've found these ideas and resources useful and easy to implement in your classroom. Comment below if you have found success with any of these ideas or if you have ideas to add! Happy teaching!