In recent years, concerns for student mental health and well-being have increased as mental health challenges have surged. An increasing number of students are experiencing anxiety, depression and trauma-related stress. These mental challenges impact both learning and classroom dynamics. This is an important issue for educators because they are often the first line of support for students. Nothing is more important than student mental health and well-being. If students mental health and well-being are not in a good place it is harder for them to learn and harder for them to succeed on their academic journeys. Equity-minded educators must integrate mental health awareness into their teaching. This isn’t merely compassionate, it is an essential part of equity, engagement, and long-term success.
Exploring the Meaning
It is important to distinguish mental health and mental illness. Mental health is how one’s brain and heart feel every day. It has to do with your feelings, thoughts, and how you handle things. In order to stay strong and healthy, you must take care of your mental health. Everyone has mental health. Mental illness happens when your brain has a hard time working the way it usually does and it makes thinking, feeling, and doing everyday tasks difficult. Sometimes, when mental illness can be helped with medicine. Well-being can be part of a daily practice of rituals, relationships, and regulation.
Educators who are schooled in trauma-informed teaching should work to create safe, predictable, and responsive environments for their students. Cultural responsiveness where educators honor the diverse expressions of wellness and distress is an important part of supporting student mental health and well-being. Narrative approaches such as helping student journal and name their various experiences helps support mental health and well-being as well.
Classroom Applications
Educators should make supporting mental health and well-being part of their normal classroom routine. They can do this by building check-in rituals into their classrooms. This can be done in things like morning circles where students sit in a circle and share how they are feeling. Some morning circles include repeating affirmations. Other morning circle routines include mini-discussions about things like kindness, teamwork, or gratitude.
Another tool educators can use to support mental health and well-being in their classrooms is “rose and thorn” reflections. This is an activity that can be done at the end of the day. Student share a rose aka something positive that happened during the day. This can be a happy moment or something they are proud about that happened. They also share a thorn aka something challenging or hard. This can be a mistake, a tough feeling, or something that didn’t go well. Some educators as bud aka something the students are looking forward to or still growing.
Other educators use mood meters like the one pictured below to help students talk about their moods in an easy to handle manner. Mood meters helps students identify and recognize their emotions rather than ignoring them. Mood meters help build emotional vocabulary and support self-regulation. When educators use mood meters, they as, students to point to or color their mood at the start of the day. Students are asked why they feel that way and what they need at the moment.
Most mood meters use colors to show different kinds of feelings:
| Color | Feeling Type | Examples |
| 🔴 Red | High energy, unpleasant | Angry, frustrated, nervous |
| 🟡 Yellow | High energy, pleasant | Excited, happy, proud |
| 🔵 Blue | Low energy, unpleasant | Sad, tired, lonely |
| 🟢 Green | Low energy, pleasant | Calm, content, relaxed |
In the classroom, it is important to normalize mental health language. This means educators should use term like “regulation,” “overwhelm,” and “recharge.” It is also a good practice to integrate social and emotional learning prompts into lessons with journaling and literature discussions. Some prompts that would be useful for this include: “What does a safe classroom look like?” or “How do we show care in our community?”
Conclusion
Educators must understand that supporting mental health and well-being is not an add-on or an extra. It is foundational to their educational practice. Students who feel seen, safe, and supported can learn and thrive on their educational journeys. Educators don’t have to be therapists in order to be a safe place for students. Through their rituals, words , and classroom culture, educators can create a safe place for their students to protect their mental health and well-being.
Further Reading
The Best Educators Strive to Create Equity-Centered Classrooms
Unlock Your Doctoral Success: Coaching & Resources That Work
Unleash the Fire Within: Maya Angelou’s Lifegiving Wisdom for Educators
About the Author
Dr. Janeane Davis is Founder and Principal Consultant at Janeane Davis and Associates: Educational Consultants. Most of her writing begins at a well-lit desk where strategy meets storytelling and systems take shape around real lives. Her consulting work centers families, scholars, and institutions committed to equity—and she writes to bring clarity to complex questions, especially those often left unasked.
Desk light on. Pages open. Always listening.