Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Has anyone asked you how you are doing?

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This is normally a time in our schools when we might focus on teaching students about the importance of mental health. But has anyone asked you, as the practitioner working long hours, physically distanced from your students, friends and loved ones, how you are doing? This Mental Health Awareness Month we want to know about you. And we want to know what your school community is doing to ensure that you are mentally ready to tackle the challenges we will be facing in education this summer and fall.

I will be hosting our next NYSUT Twitter chat on Sunday, May 31 at 7 PM focused on your mental health and wellbeing and what school communities should be doing to prepare for the return to school this fall. A Twitter chat is a great way to engage with other practitioners, share ideas and problem solve together in a quick, one-hour interactive conversation. I hope you will join me on Twitter by following @nysutEVP or you can follow the hashtag #NYSUTchat.

In the meantime, we should all start planning for a return to school where paying attention to mental health will be just as critical as solving the concerns we have about our school community's physical safety. After all, a teacher's working conditions is a student's learning conditions. Students can't learn if they don't feel safe and secure, and teachers can't do their best to meet students' needs if they are not attending to their own mental health. So what should schools be doing? 
  • Allow time for faculty, staff and students to debrief before returning to school or campus, so the supports needed to start the academic year off right are ready for everyone upon their return.
  • Discuss your campus or school's mental health plan. Don't have a mental health plan? Start working collaboratively in a labor/management partnership to create one that addresses the needs of faculty, staff and students.
The bottom line is this.  As you've been working long hours planning, teaching and assessing each student's progress academically, you've also been working on staying connected to them and showing them that you care. This isn't easy to do. But for some of your students, you haven't been able to reach them at all. You might be worried, scared or feeling very uncertain about what the future holds for you and for them. Going back to "normal" isn't really an option for any of us. So we need to process these feelings together and learn how to plan to control those aspects of our personal and professional lives that are within our sphere of influence.

How many of you have truly processed how it felt to pack up your classroom for the summer during this period of remote learning?  How many of you wept in your car as you participated in a parade through a local neighborhood?  It is important to let yourself feel all of that, but it is equally important to do something about those feelings, because we are in this together.  

We have it in our power to harness labor/management partnerships to start planning now for an environment where we are all taking care of each other physically and mentally, but we mustn't wait until the fall. NYSUT sees you, and we are here to help. So I will ask you again, how are you doing?  Join us on Sunday, May 31st and let's talk about it.

Resources that can help you with planning:


By at

A Family of Educators - My final speech as NYSUT's Executive Vice President

  Educators are my family. In the narrowest sense, members of my immediate family have been educators – I will talk about one in a moment. ...