Prioritizing Mental Health: Communicating with Attending Skills in our School

Abstract

Students are struggling with mental health (e.g., stress, anxiety, depression) and educators cannot ignore how this impacts their teaching. Navigating interactions with students who are dealing with mental health challenges can be a difficult task for any teacher or school staff member. However, it is crucial to provide students with the support they need to manage their mental health in ways that promote academic achievement. Education communities must be proactive in helping students build strong supportive relationships in order to reach desired mental health outcomes. The purpose of this manuscript is to continue the conversation on the importance of establishing stronger mental health outcomes through the use of effective communication strategies (i.e., attending skills). Through effective communication a teacher can build stronger interpersonal relationships, which can help augment and support student mental health (Zheng et al., 2023). Attending skills such as observation, reflecting feelings, empathetic listening, and open-ended questions can help create space and opportunity for students to be heard and feel more affirmed in the classroom (Ivey et al., 2019). The article aims to cover these attending skills as a means to help educators develop stronger teacher-student relationships in the school environment.