Module 3
Mental Health for Students and Teachers
Welcome to Module 3: Mental Health affect each and everyone one of us, we take care of our physical health so why not take care of our mental health. This module aims to shed light on several key topics that are arising in our schools now and provide you with resources, lessons & ideas about these topics such as self image, bullying and decreasing stigma around mental health. Although we would like to speak in depth about how to help each and every student we simply can’t explore everything within this single module. Please make use of the links provided for more specific information.
Mental Health for Students and Teachers
The goal of this module is to examine and understand how we can determine what our diverse students need to feel safe and represented in the material. Research tells us that creating and maintaining a positive learning environment, building a learning community, giving consistent feedback in a timely manner, and using the right technology to deliver the right content (Nafukho & Chakraborty, 2014) are key factors in strengthening student engagement in online courses. This module will provide you with the information and opportunities to develop your personalized pedagogical approach towards building healthy, safe, and inclusive Physical Education communities via distance learning.
There are many activities, research articles, videos and ted talks that act as a content for this module, but are also intended for you to use with your students in your own classrooms. Please work through the material at your own pace as some videos and content may be difficult to engage with for some. If you need help or need to speak to a counsellor please speak to someone close to you, or call 911 if it is an emergency. There are many resources and organizations dedicated to this in your province and Wellness Together Canada is a Canada wide company that offers free counselling or if you want something day to day you can use their phone app to learn about mental health, practice good behaviours and track your progress.
The Big Ideas
Starting the Conversation about Mental Health in PHE
Teaching has rapidly evolved and has quickly adapted to including technological in our pedagogy. Whether it's using google classroom, sharing and editing each other's work online, or working through an online activity, our students need to become good digital citizens and learn to communicate with their classroom peers and practice these skills for them to communicate with fellow co-workers in the future. As educators, it is our role to set the foundation of building blocks to help students become smart, conscientious, and innovative beings both behind the screen and in person.
Who experiences Mental Health? And what is it?
Mental Health affects each and everyone one of us. We take care of our physical health so why not take care of our mental health. This module aims to shed light on several key topics that are arising in our schools now and provide you with resources, lesson ideas and professional discussions about these topics. Although we would like to speak in depth about how to help each and every student we simply can’t explore everything within this single module. Please make use of the links provided for more specific information
As physical and health educators, we can loose touch with with our co-workers because of all the demands put on us (i.e. running intramural at lunch). The pandemic didn't help matters, from the constant changing of class locations, virtual to in-person and some PHE teachers loosing their gymnasiums entirely so that math and english classes could all be taught at once while social distancing. PHE teachers were left with questions about how can they authentically assess their students or teach them physical literacy over a camera!
There is an overwhelming feeling among PHE teachers of feeling marginalized and there is research to show this. PHE teachers suffer from burnout earlier in their careers, compared to teachers from other subjects which isn't surprising considering the lack of support for our efforts of organizing team trips and running tournaments. Every teacher works hard and organizes special events for their students, however other subjects are often deemed as important so they get the recognition and support they need, but research shows that physical health and education programs are lacking in this area, creating the divide and sence of marginalization of physical health and education teachers.
Activity: Teachers Prioritize Yourself
When you read this article consider your perspective and consider:
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Have you felt marginalized in your current position? And did the article help you find solutions?
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How often have you advocated for PHE and physical literacy with parents who don't view it as necessary?
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Do you suffer from teachers burnout - or have a colleuge that does? what are some ways you can get or give support?
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Do you agree that a PHE department website would be useful in educating parents and showcasing what PHE has to offer?
"T
hrough the research, it also became apparent that PE programs are suffering extreme marginalization compared to other subjects and that PE teachers are feeling a large sense of ―burnout early in their careers
Checking in with our Community
This module wouldn't serve its purpose if we didn't take care of our community and check-in with everyone enrolled in these modules with the PHE Wise Digital Culture Lab. Checking in may seem such a small gesture but it can have a huge impact on the mood, mental health and overall disposition of you, your students, your co-worker, family or friend you are checking in with.
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Please take a few moments complete this survey, as a participant, for our research purposes
Activity - Personal Risk Factors Checklist
In answering the questions above, did you find some that resonated more with you? Or some that fit your lifestyle more than others? We often know what our triggers are, or things we need to make sure we monitor our behaviour to stay our healthiest physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Which is why having students create their own checklist could be an eye opening experience. They may think they are doing great, eating good food all the time, moderating their social media and computer game usage but in reality it isn't until we take a step back, do we really see the big picture.
Create your own checklist first and use it for a week, a month or a few days. It will show you the benefit and perhaps shed some light on which one of your students it could help. Use google forms, excel, a word doc, notes app on your phone to create your list to review each day and share a picture on this wakelet.
Teachers
We don't need to tell you that every student is different, which is why having them develop their own questions could reflect specific things they need to keep track of, for example:
1) What was your sleep quality?
2) Have you taken tech breaks lately? (no tech before bed, or not using a certain app)
3) Have you scheduled your time appropriately by giving yourself breaks?
4) What are your emotional and physical pain scores today?
5) Are you staying hydrated?
6) Nature, pets , spiritual beliefs, etc.
These questions may seem simple, but to someone having a difficult day, week or even a difficult year, the simple act of checking in could go a long way.
The website idontmind.com has created a 10 question check in (shown below) that you can use as starting point for your students.
Questions
1. How are you feeling today, really? Physically and mentally.
2. What’s taking up most of your headspace right now?
3. What was your last full meal, and have you been drinking enough water?
4. How have you been sleeping?
5. What have you been doing for exercise?
6. What did you do today that made you feel good?
7. What’s something you can do today that would be good for you?
8. What’s something you’re looking forward to in the next few days?
9. What’s something we can do together this week, even if we’re apart?
10. What are you grateful for right now?
Self identify your own risk factors and protective factors and monitoring them can increase self awareness and help develop more positive behaviours and protective factors. Some people may do this mentally and self reflect by thinking; "I haven't been sleeping well, that's probably why my mood is off" or "the construction is making my commute to school even longer, I wonder if that's why I'm more irritable?'". It's more likely that adults self-reflect on our behaviour more than our students do, which is why this could be a great activity for your students in any grade.
There are several ways of doing this, from a simple paper and pencil check list, to a creative dot journal entry (see picture above, bottom left). Students can even create a google form or a simple phone application that promps them with questions and tracks their answers. Having diversity in the delivery of this self check will give student autonomy over which method resonates with them and increases their likelihood of using this as a self tracker or daily mood tracker.
Activity - Student's Check in Buddy
The above activity was to teach student to monitor their own mental health and promote autonomy. This activity will show students that supporting others is just as important. Even if someone doesn't personally have battles with their own mental health, that doesn't mean they can't be involved in helping others through a difficult time. This video interviews of teenagers about their mental health during the COVID pandemic and school shut-downs. It's very relatable and can be used in conjunction with this activity or another one you have in your teaching arsenal.
Secret Buddy
Students will choose a SECRET check in buddy. Your students will then create a digital journal and document when and how they helped their secret buddy. By 'secret' we mean that the buddy can't know they are writing a journal about what strategies your student is using to help their buddy and it's important to also keep their buddy's name secret for obvious reasons.
You may add a self-reflection to this assignment, because building empathy in students to open up and start the conversation about mental health and teach them how to have real conversations and build trusting relationships is very important
who
Students could pick anyone who they see on a regular basis (weekly)
what
Students will document how they have tried to help their secret buddy, what strategies did they used? and how it made them feel or their buddy feel. Try to have students stay away from names, or specific stories about what their buddy is going through etc. as this is not the point of the exercise.
when
You decide, however, as this is a mental health issue and we can't predict them. So we recommend having the student complete 4-6 journal entries over the course of the semester or term.
why
This journal will allow your students to keep track of how they helped their buddy, what worked etc.
Digital Journal Templates
Consolidation, depending on the grades you are teaching, could be anywhere between building relationships with friends to demonstrating how discussing mental health and physical health could benefit everyone.
The more we include mental health discussions into everyday conversations, the more we can educate people and break the stigma around mental health.
De-stigmatizing mental health in our classrooms is so important and it doesn't mean we have to talk about it all the time. It merely means allowing our students to be free to talk about their mental health without judgment from peers, teachers, family or friends. As teachers we have a duty to help our students understand that being healthy includes everything, physical health, mental health, sexual health and emotional health.
Talking about Stigma
he main reasons for (not) seeking and accessing professional help given by young people are those related to mental health stigma and embarrassment, a lack of mental health knowledge and negative perceptions of help-seeking."
Radez, J. et al. (2021)
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Activity - Article & Jamboard
A School-Based Intervention for Mental Illness Stigma: A Cluster Randomized Trial
ABSTRACT
Curriculum Intervention about Stigma
Exposure/Expert panel of youth living with mental health issues
Provided with printed material/achor charts about mental health
Every year your classroom culture changes depending on the cohort of students that year, which may modify how you teach certain topics and mental health may be one of those modified topics. Are you students open minded and inclusive? Or are they a big abrasive and is there some bullying going on in your class?
As Physical & Health Educators, we have some very difficult topics to cover in our health curriculum and Mental Health and Stigma is one of those topics. Do you have a unique idea or method that you use when teaching a certain group of students? It's time to share those ideas and gather some new pedagogy strategies or other lesson ideas.
There are no wrong answers, only collaborations! As teachers we have tried several ways of teaching the same lesson before we settled on what works for our students, a certain grade, demographic or class culture. These are the lessons, teaching strategies or tips we think would be valuable to share. Click on the Jamboard link below to access the board.
Activity - Video
As we dive deep into mental health, student's emotions may be raised which gives us the perfect opportunity to speak and share about our stories and struggles. Reminding students that there is a big difference between empathy and sympathy and as stories are shared we need to be open to listening and be empathetic to what each of us have gone through. Everyone’s journey in life is different but most of us have experienced similar emotions, but in different situations. This may level the playing field and help students be empathetic to each other by connecting through those shared experiences.
Talking about mental health, students are already going through so many physical, psychological and emotional changes as they grow up and can often feel overwhelmed but don't understand those feelings. Educating ourselves and arming your students so that if, and when, you or someone we care about is feel this way, you know and understand what’s really going. Those feelings or thoughts could be taken care of by either talking to a friend, a therapist, or by engaging in activities that could be identified as one of your protective factors (which we will discuss in the next section).
Since every class is unique, this activity is meant to open up the conversation about mental health, and although the work sheet, provided below, is directly related to Kristen Bell's video, it could be adapted towards any of the following videos.
Activity - Celeb Videos with Worksheet
There are so many public figures such as; Selena Gomez, Tom Holland, Kevin Love, Clara Hughes, Demar Derozon, Naomi Osaka, Carey Price, Simone Biles. They have come forward to speak about their mental health struggles, how they got through it and how they continue to carry on and manage their mental health without it derailing their goals in life. It's so important that students understand that if and/or when negative feeling arise they should find someone they are comfortable with and talk to them about it. Because the sooner they deal with it, the sooner they can carry on and not have it affect other areas of their lives. This message alone will hopefully decrease the stigma that comes with seeing help.
Worksheet Q & A
Download
In consolidation, you may want to look at several mental health campaigns that have arisen over the years such as Bell Let's Talk day and the CAMH Mental Health Week. Encourage your students to see the Pro's and Con's to such campaigns. Should we only talk about mental health for only 1 day or 1 week a year? How would they change the campaign? Are there better ones out there that should be more mainstream so that students their age could resonate and seek help if they need it? Having them go through these exercises will help reduce the stigma, but it will also help them become advocates, open listeners and shoulders for people in their lives that may need them. Just because we may not suffer from these issues ourselves, doesn't mean that one day we may not need to help someone we care about get through a difficult time.
Building Protective Factors
Developing protective factors in our lives is one of the best ways to stay healthy physically and mentally. Being involved in hobbies, social engagements and having a support systems of family and friends, is not only good for our students but good for us too. As teachers we could have a difficult time keeping a balanced lifestyle which is why managing our stress and identifying our own protective factors is equally important.
Risk Factors and why Protective factors are important - Pre and Post COVID
The relationship between protective factors and your mental health cannot be ignored as they have a direct relationship to one another. As physical & health education teachers we already know the importance of this topic for our students and you probably already have activities that you use with your students to help them identify their protective factors. THERE WILL BE A SECTION BELOW TO SHARE THESE ACTIVIES WITH ONEANOTHER.... EDIT THIS
Over the last few years, with the shut down of schools and sudden change in lifestyles because of the pandemic, several risk factors for students became more prominent such as peer victimization, isolation, cyber bullying and lack of peer socialization. Alternately, protective factors such as building relationships with your students and helping them develop their personal resilience can go a long way for some students that are prone to living with poor mental health. The images below discusses a few of these topics.
peer victimization
Increased with virtual school and higher technology usage when student exchanges aren't monitored or reported
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Overwhelming
Responsibilities
youth or siblings acting in place of a parent can increase stress and anxiety and take away childhoods
Student-Teacher
Relationships
strong relationships decreased peer victimization in elementary schools and you can act as a positive support in a students life
Personal
Resilience
identifying personal strengths, coping mechanisms and good social supports can build resilience and confidence in students
Peer
Socialization
social emotional learning strategies, team building, group resolution and having students solve problems on their own will build these skills
thinklink, explain everything, canva, mural, prezi, coggle, mind node, lucid chart
- Read this article and create a mind map of how things connect (from the article and from your experience) you can use these suggested categories or create some of your own... 1) Risk - peer victimization, home stress, responsibility burdens, family pressures / 2) Protective - social support, coping strategies, exercise
- could look at all things that contribute to poor mental health, substance abuse, eating disorders, violent behaviour, delienquency, gangs, drugs, crime
Article and Mind Map Activity
Risk Factors and why Protective factors are important
The relationship between you personal protective factors and your mental health cannot be ignored as they have a direct relationship to one another. As physical & health education teachers we already know the importance of this topic for our students and you probably already have activities that you use with your students to help them identify their protective factors.
Over the last several years, with the shut down of schools and sudden change in lifestyles because of the pandemic, several risk factors for students became more prominent such as peer victimization, isolation, cyber bullying and lack of peer socialization. Alternately, protective factors such as building relationships with your students and helping them develop their personal resilience can go a long way for some students that are prone to living with poor mental health. The images below discusses a few of these topics.
peer victimization
Increased with virtual school and higher technology usage when student exchanges aren't monitored or reported
Overwhelming
Responsibilities
youth or siblings acting in place of a parent can increase stress and anxiety and take away childhoods
Student-Teacher
Relationships
strong relationships decreased peer victimization in elementary schools and you can act as a positive support in a students life
Personal
Resilience
identifying personal strengths, coping mechanisms and good social supports can build resilience and confidence in students
Peer
Socialization
social emotional learning strategies, team building, group resolution and having students solve problems on their own will build these skills
Article and Mind Map Activity
As you have probably experienced, protective factors can vary drastically from one person to another and what one person prefers isn't what will help the next person. There is no one size fits all when it comes to this, however, there are certain categories that many of them can be organized into. Such as; relationships, social/communication, hobbies, activities/physical movement, preventative behaviours and location or spacial environment to name a few.
This article examines the relationship between certain risk and protective factors (personal resilience, peer socialization and student-teacher relationships etc.) and the role they play in students building resilience.
Read the article and make connections between risk factors and protective factors gathered from your personal experience, from the article or one you suggest to your students. Categorize the factors and create a mind map to show the connections between them, which ones can be considered risk and protective factors and how they are related. This can be a personal mind map to be used a a self exploration exercise to tie together all your protective and risk factors or create one to use as a demonstration for your class.
Creating a mind map can be a great way for students to visualize the connection between their own protective factors, what category they fall under and then compare with their friends to see what other protective factors fall under that category.
There are many mind-mapping software available for free and below is a curated list of our favourites, feel free to try a new one or use one that you are comfortable with. No need to post this as this activity was to demonstrate and spark interest into a different activity you can do with your students, therefore create something that is useful for yourself.
Additional Resources
In addition to the above mind map activity for students, showing this video (for elementary audiences) could help teaching students about how to be resilient and manage their emotions. As well as help them identify what protective factors they have in their lives and when to use them. The video talks about finding healthy ways to deal with stressful situations and gives the example of petting your pet and talking to someone. This is a great video on it's own or coupled with the above activity.
Article: Self-Image as Risk factor
elf-image plays an important role in every stage of development and is particularly important during adolescence, a time when individuals extensively reorganize their self and relationships."
Di Blasi, M., et al. (2015)
"S
It cannot be denied that youth suffer from low self-esteem, social anxiety or a variety of insecurities as they navigate through school and their lives. It is a part of growing up, as we have all done it, however the additional challenge to them is the over abundance of imposed societal norms through social media and the over exposure of social media to younger and younger audiences.
This article identifies the relationships between social behaviours, self-image and anxiety in adolescents. It may seem obvious, but the article speaks to how adolescents that have a sense of belonging to a peer group had lower social anxiety. However the question; is how do they overcome their social anxiety to make friends and eventually belong with a peer group?
When reading this article think about:
1) How might building self esteem and self-image help with social anxiety?
2) What are some ways that you have taught 'positive self image' in your class, did you students respond well? Did you experience similar results as in the article?
This activity is 2-fold; reading the article above and scaffolding an activity for students below.
Activity: Building a positive Eye
After reading the article above, and drawing on your own conclusions as a teacher, it's clear to see that students whom have confidence and a positive self image will have less social anxiety which could have a bunch of other positive effects on their physical and mental well being. This activity is meant to help students see positive traits about themselves that they have not, or may not, think of on their own. Especially for students suffering from poor self-esteem or diminished mental health.
Being able to see good attributes can be difficult and defiantly take students out of their comfort zone. Properly scaffolding this activity will lead to positive results for all students involved and the hopes is that the results are long lasting and helps to build students' confidence in general.
As Madeline says in her video at 4:20 "Look in that mirror... Find that one thing, that ability, that trait that you love about yourself"
To start the task, have your students brain storm a list of positive traits on the board, this can especially helpful for younger students or for a class that isn't emotionally mature yet. The idea is that they can only use the words on the board to describe one another, so creating an extensive list will give them lots of options. Use this time to discuss and teach them about positive attributes and the connection between being confidence and having high self esteem and how it can decrease social anxiety and even be a protective factor against bullying.
Depending on your class culture you can choose to do this activity in any way you see fit, but the general idea is that you have students draw or trace a silhouette of their head or entire body on a large piece of chart paper. Each student will then circle or write something they don't like about themselves and put a heart around something they like about themselves etc. Once the students are finished with their own silhouette, it's time for students to visit each other's papers through a gallery walk around the class.
Students are instructed to write a positive attribute on each others papers (using the list you created if necessary). At the end of the class, students have an entire list of positive attributes they can reflect on when they look in that mirror - as Madeline mentioned. The above example was created digitally, but it still gives you an example of what the finished product would look like. Something to consider would be the colour of markers you use, as different colours will identify the individual who wrote each comment, which could be a good or a bad thing depending on your class culture.
Social Media
Social media and all forms of communication through tech is a necessary evil that we have to live with in our every days lives. It's uses range from corporate recruitment through Linked In, to following friends and family on Instagram and Facebook. Social medial can be toxic and should be used in moderation and with self control. However often times teens and youth don't know the negative effects it can have on their mental and physical health if unhealthy habits are formed.
Do you have a negative relationship with Social Media and is it hurting you?
As many of us begin our instructional time with our students, the constant reminder to our students about not being on their phone while in class is necessary and repetitive. At what point should external reminders be replaced with self-awareness and self regulation? (should we be in charge of this or should they be in charge of their own behaviour)
How many of you are hypocrites, in that we tell our students to put away their phones but then we get distracted by our own devices while at work or in meetings?
What are some words that come to mind when we think of the effects of social media on teenagers and youth?
Instant Gratification
addiction
distracted
harrassment
depression
distant
un-engaged
Activity # - Padlet: Social Media Ted talk
Bailey Parnell discusses the effects of chronic social media usage and what it can do to our mental health. She addresses several problems of social media such as the highlight reel and how disctructive it could be to self image, especially if you are comparing your real life to others highlight reels. This compared with the social anxiety of missing out and the obsession over the number of likes or views you get could all have a negative affect on anyone! ADD MORE?
As Bailey states, recognizing the problem is already apart of the solution, doing a self-assessment on your own social media usage can go a long way to helping yourself as well as helping other catch unhealthy patterns of their own social media usage.
Using the padlet link please post your reflections on one of the topics mentioned in the video. The post could be about your own personal experience or based on what you see from students, other adults or from your own children.
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Highlight reel - we compare our behind the scenes to everyone’s highlight reel
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Social currency (likes, comments etc.)
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Fear of Missing out / social anxiety
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Online Harassement
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Do micro moments - lead to a macro problem?
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CLEAN UP THESE POINTS EDIT THIS
Activity # - Social Media the good the bad and the Ugly
EDIT THIS... SOCIAL MEDIAL APPS tudents and adding an element of gamification can increase the participation of those few students who often sit out. This pedagogy style is being implemented everywhere because increases the number of jobs or roles in each game which can be geared towards students practicing different functional skills such as agility, speed, acuracy, self-regulation and communication. Now that you've gathered tip and resources fromt he padlet activity above, it's your chance to put everything into action.
outh use social media in the service of critical adolescent developmental tasks, such as identity development, aspirational development, and peer engagement.."
Di Blasi, M., et al. (2015)
"Y
reflect - on the article... give some questions
While reading the article,. think about these things....
Activity # - Review a phone application
EDIT THIS
Teachers to post on PADLET/WAKELET of an application
- coping strategies for students, they have their phones with them all the time why not use it for their advantage
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if they try a journal, they may not like it so try a different one
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tried a guided meditation and didn't like, try a different one
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could be a good critical thinking analysis assignment, look at the target market etc.
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what will this review look like? an amazon review? 5 stars etc.
Calm is the #1 app for Sleep, Meditation and Relaxation. Join the millions experiencing better sleep, lower stress, and less anxiety with our guided meditations, Sleep Stories, breathing programs, stretching exercises, and relaxing music. Calm is recommended by top psychologists, therapists, and mental health experts. Available for download on Android and iOS.
Talk about using these applications could be helpful and act as a protective factor for students whom may be dealing with bullying online or in school.
Segway into bullying
Insight Timer offers guided meditations, sleep music tracks and talks led by the top meditation and mindfulness experts, neuroscientists, psychologists and teachers from Stanford, Harvard, the University of Oxford and more. Music tracks from world-renowned artists. Join millions learning to meditate on Insight Timer to help calm the mind, reduce anxiety, manage stress, and sleep deeply. Available on Android and iOS.
EDIT THIS - This article summarizes several approaches that look specifically at improving student engagement in an online class. Key topics include how students interact with content, collaborate with one another, and the communication that takes place within the online course.
When you read this article consider what adjustments you have made over the last few years, whether it was teaching virtually, hybrid or face to face.
Below is a summary of the 5 student engagement strategies from this article. If you hover over them you will reveal some tips for implementing them in your Health and Physical Education class.
Activity # - Bullying
Article
Need to ask .... what do students want?
this article asks the following research questions:
RQ1. What strategies have been used by instructors to motivate and engage
students in online class environment?
RQ2. What are the instructors’ and students’ perceptions regarding online student
engagement strategies?
RQ3. What teaching and learning activities are utilized to engage students in online
learning environments?
Research Articles
To finish off this Module, we invite you to read 3 of 6 of the following research articles. Each research article has roots deep in inclusive pedagogy but touches on different topics and areas. Choose articles that will help you elevate your teaching practice.
Research Article Collection
Risk and Protective Factors for Prospective Changes in Adolescent
Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Journal of Youth Adolescence 50, 44–57.
Magson, N.R., Freeman, J.Y.A., Rapee, R.M. et al. (2021)
The effects of screen time on health and well-being on children and adolescence: a systematic review of reviews
British Medical Journal
Open Access
Neza Stiglic and Russell M Viner (2019)
Promoting Social and Emotional Learning in Physical Education
Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 89 (4), 27-33
Ciotto, C. M., & Gagnon, A. G. (2018)
Social aspects of synchronous virtual
learning environments
AIP Conference Proceedings 2048, 020032
Veronica Racheva (2018)
Non-Suicidal Self-Injury in Our Schools: A Review and Research-Informed Guidelines for School Mental Health Professionals
Canadian Journal of School Psychology, Vol. 32(2) 122–143
Melissa E. De Riggi, Samira Moumne, Nancy L. Heath & Stephen P. Lewis (2017)
Building Positive Relationships with Students Struggling with Mental Health
The Phi Delta Kappan
Vol. 100, No. 6 (March 2019), pp. 56-59
Jessica Minahan (2019)
