This week a friend of mine challenged me to do 25 pushups for 25 days as a way of raising awareness for mental wellness issues that can lead to suicide and it goes by the tag #matesofmatesformates.
Yesterday was Day 1Ā and I questionned – what can we do beyond the challenge? How does doing 25 pushups for 25 days actually help anything?
WhatĀ IĀ will do is find out more about mental health. It is one of those things that we (at least I) think I know about. That kind of thinking means I need to learn more.
And I’ll share what I find out.
Yesterday evening I sawĀ a TEDx talk by Phillip J. Roundtree where he talks specifically about Black mental health. IĀ need to listen to what he says more.
In the video, he talked of trauma and how it affects black people, how it affected him.
Some questions to ask ourselves:
AsĀ teachers, how often have we described a black student as rudeĀ or that they don’t care about their education based on specific behaviours before stopping to think about the effects of trauma on that child? I have always believed that there is a reason for every behaviour. Sometimes those reasons lay deep.
How often haveĀ we done this with an Indegenous student?
When we take a look at our resource and behavioural programs –Ā haveĀ we stopped toĀ think how these knee-jerk responses areĀ built right into our school system?
How are we going to change this?