What should school officials do to protect the mental health of its employees?

As many people know, the mental health of everyone has been a hot topic of discussion recently.

As many people know, the mental health of everyone has been a hot topic of discussion recently. This is mainly because of the fact that our society is beginning to understand the importance of mental health as well as how our mental health is impacted by various activities in our lives. We as a society have started to actively pursue ways to be aware of the status of our mental health and seek ways to protect our mental health.

So how should school administrators and school system central offices protect the mental health of its employees? What programs should be put in place? What considerations should be made? Who should be involved in the decision-making process when considerations are being made?

What programs should be put in place?

So let’s start with the first question, what programs should be put in place? When I worked for a school system, there was always systemwide programs in place to address the mental health needs of employees. The one program that I specifically remember is a resource that employees could call to get mental health assistance. This usually took the form of a few free therapy sessions. I knew of a few people who took advantage of this service however it always seemed as though it fell short for most employees or wasn’t as readily available as needed.

My recommendation to improve this kind of service would be to schedule regular in person check-in sessions with the counseling team or staff with all schools and offices. This way employees know when someone will be on site to assist them with their mental health needs. This would also help the counseling team; this helps them to be more proactive and in touch with the people that they have been charged to serve.

There should also be regularly scheduled health and fitness sessions for each school and office in a school system. This makes it easier for employees to stay healthy. These sessions wouldn’t need to be free, a small nominal fee could be charged for sessions. The important thing is to ensure that there is accessibility for all employees to improve their overall health.

What considerations should be made?

I think that there are two main considerations that need to be made in consideration of the mental health of school employees. The first is the amount of testing that is completed during the school year. School testing take alot of man power and planning to do well. It disrupts the school schedule each time a big test is facilitated, when it disrupts the schedule it impacts teaching planning, trip, fire drills, etc. There are a number of operations that have to be shut down or slowed down. This leads to a great deal of stress for various members of a school staff. In this article, I am not including the amount of stress that it causes students but that it also an important factor to consider. School systems must reduce the amount of testing, they should find one comprehensive test that can be administered no more than twice a year. There has to be a way that all of the testing that school systems are currently using can be consolidated to reduce the amount of stress on everyone and still get the needed data points for students.

The other consideration that needs to be made is breaks for staff. Days off should be scheduled throughout the year so that teachers and staff members have the needed downtime to get refreshed. It is common knowledge that the educational field is one that is more challenging than it ever has been. So it is crucial for staff members to have scheduled spaced out breaks to get rejuvenated throughout the school year.

Who should be involved in the decision-making process process when considerations are being made?

It is important that representatives from all stakeholder groups are included when decisions are being made on behalf of doing what it best for the mental health of the school staff. Of course the leadership of the school or school system needs to be involved. However it would be important to also include teacher representatives, members of the school counseling team, members of the health and wellness team and student representatives may also be helpful.

If we are going to retain school staff members our local school systems will need to take a really hard look at what they are doing to protect the mental health of all of its employees.