Students Are Getting Mental Health Days. So Why Don’t Teachers?
Students Are Getting Mental Health Days. So Why Don't ...
https://www.edweek.org › teaching-learning › 2021/08
By Madeline Will — August 03, 2021 7 min read
Collage by Gina Tomko/Education Week (Images: iStock/Getty Images Plus)
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Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify the Oregon Department of Education’s suggestions for how districts can support staff.
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Emily Wang noticed that when her teachers seemed stressed, their demeanor changed, and sometimes they took out their frustration on students. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone, the 16-year-old wondered if teachers could take mental health days?
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Emily, a high school senior at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Md., surveyed two dozen public and private school teachers across the county last school year about whether they think teachers need mental health days. Nearly 80 percent said yes, and the vast majority also said they think mental health days would improve teachers’ performance in the classroom.
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Yet Emily has received a lukewarm reaction from administrators and union officials as she’s tried to pitch her research and proposal of paid mental health days for teachers. She said she’s been told that educators want to focus on student mental health—which Emily agrees is important. But she wonders why that same attention isn’t given to teachers.