This Suicide Prevention Week—September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day—support your students and your school community. These resources can help. Use this toolkit to help reduce mental health stigma, promote wellness and acknowledge the mental health needs of students and staff alike. Inform your students about support available through the Crisis Text Line, and use the E.D.G.E. technique to help students support one another throughout the year.
Throughout May, we've been sharing resources supporting educator and student mental health. Now, as Mental Health Awareness Month comes to a close, we hope you'll commit to integrating mental health literacy into your curricula and normalizing discussions of mental health and wellness year round.
Celebrate Pride Month by taking action to support LGBTQ+ youth in increasingly hostile school environments and in our communities. The new spring magazine feature “A Refuge for LGBTQ+ Young People” explains students’ rights and how gender and sexuality alliance (GSA) clubs provide spaces for young people to thrive. This new article and these LFJ resources highlight that everyone benefits when inclusivity is intentional.
Teaching children empathy that leads to justice means much more than teaching kindness. Adults—educators, parents and caregivers—who support young learners have the opportunity to create “culture[s] of justice” in which empathy and justice are the priority. These LFJ resources feature strategies that educators, parents and caregivers can use to actively engage little learners as they develop age-appropriate skills and understanding that will lead them forward in the pursuit of justice.
Recent headlines point to all kinds of student action, from tackling climate change to advocating for more equitable schools. But those of us who work with students know they're doing what young people have always done: leading the way toward necessary change. In this edition of The Moment, we offer resources to help you support your students when they stand up against injustice, fight for equity and take the lead in shaping a better future for all of us.