Teaching young people the tools to deal with a troubled world

Are we doing as much as we can, as educators?

I read a piece, in the TES magazine, this morning that explored the ways to keep students feeling hopeful in a troubled world- is this realistic enough? There were jolly messages of how we’ll need historians, geographers etc-yes, there is hope for the future, but what about when that young person can’t see beyond the end of the school day, can’t fathom how a half term break may look and who knows where they’ll be in ten years time?

In a world where we are seeing rising amounts of mental health issues within children, the initial task surely has to be thinking about how we can support the younger generation in understanding emotional health, as well as nervous system regulation to cope with the ever changing world. Whilst I agree that having a career, in mind, to aim for is always going to be positive in terms of goal setting, for me it is about teaching tools to be able to cope with the stepping stones along the way.

I’m not even talking about huge, life changing events here- I’m delving so granular as to consider the day to day anxiety that some young people experience and have no clue how to cope with. Over time, this manifests and we find our NHS overwhelmed when we have dysregulated adults that have lived the majority of their lives in flight or fight. Remember how you felt when you genuinely left your homework or cooking ingredients at home? That dull ache, in the pit of your stomach, as you waited for the consequences. You couldn’t call your mum to drop it off as you were too scared to even ask at the office (plus, your mum was at work, so you’d get in extra trouble from her anyway!) You’d find yourself in a loop of overthinking and this ‘coping’ mechanism is one you’d use for the rest of your life.

What about exam stress? Feeling pressure at school is one of the biggest triggers for declining mental health in teenagers. They feel stressed but don’t know what to do about it. Mindless scrolling on Tiktok, hours spent in their bedrooms, avoiding society and vitamin D, is only adding to the problem at hand.

What if we released our young people of these thoughts, by introducing breathwork and mindfulness in to schools? Allowed students to learn how to ground themselves, regulating their nervous systems, releasing negative emotions and replacing them with a sense of calm, peace and more joy? It sounds simple, yet ground breaking because this is something that simply does not exist in main stream schools and for the majority of our young people.

Whilst I feel passionate about my subject, that of English, I feel more passionately about the emotional and mental wellbeing of our next generation. We have struggled and learnt so much about this area, during our time on the planet- why would we allow them to go through the same experience, when we now know better?