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Students and educators have faced countless, unprecedented hardships over the past two school years. We hope that during this Mental Illness Awareness Week, you’ll incorporate mental health literacy into your work with students. These LFJ resources highlight ways to destigmatize mental illness and feature tips for interrupting harmful school practices, which especially affect Black youth. We all need to be good to ourselves and to each other.

As we mark the 58th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march and witness the current assault on voting rights, particularly those rights of Black citizens, it’s imperative to connect the not-so-distant past to the present. These LFJ resources—including an interactive digital platform created in conjunction with the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research—can help remind us all of the sacrifices made in the name of democracy, provide context for the present, and inspire our continuing fight for justice.

In the latest LFJ article, school counseling professor Riley Drake, Ph.D., outlines a model of social and emotional learning and explains “‘feeling safe’ is contextual,” especially for Black and Brown children whose needs are often overlooked in our nation’s classrooms. Relying on community partnerships, promoting mutual aid to foster solidarity and advancing restorative justice are strategies educators and other adults can employ to increase children’s feelings of safety and well-being. These LFJ resources offer more detail.