Supporting Students’ Mental Health Needs: A Primer for Secondary School Leaders

Abstract

Students are struggling with mental health difficulties that impact their ability to learn while in school, and many students lack access to mental health providers in their communities. School administrators are in a prime position to lead systemic change aimed at supporting student mental health. The purpose of this paper is to provide secondary school leaders with a primer for developing and implementing universal screening and comprehensive systems to support student mental health.

The Emotions of Professional Learning: Considerations for Instructional Leaders

“…Although school leaders have some guidance to draw on regarding student emotions (e.g., Skaar et al, 2022), they have very little guidance regarding teacher emotions. Much of the literature on school leadership addresses the importance of building positive interpersonal relationships; doing so requires the emotional competencies necessary to build both trust (e.g., Bryk & Schneider, 2003; Tschannen-Moran, 2014) and a sense of collective efficacy (e.g., Goddard et al, 2015; Leithwood et al, 2020) with and between teachers.…”