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This Edutopia article zones in on the myths and facts of healthy nutrition-- stating that, with these nutrition tips in mind, teachers can pave the way to a healthy lifestyle not only for themselves, but for their students as well (by leading by example). Some of the common myths include: loading up on carbs provides persistent energy, fats are bad, and nutrition is about feeding the body (it's about feeding the mind too!).

Wilson, D., & Conyers, M. (2016, January 20). Feeding the Teacher's Brain: Nutrition Tips for Busy Educators. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/nutrition-tips-for-busy-educators-donna-wilson-marcus-conyers

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Teaching is a cognitively complex profession. In the course of a single school day, an educator must make hundreds of decisions and respond quickly to the myriad unexpected turns that life in the classroom may take. You have a high-energy job, so it's essential to prime your brain and body with the right fuel.

But in the busy life of a teacher, who has time to think about healthy eating, much less sorting through the sometimes-conflicting claims about the nutritional value of various food choices? Unfortunately, the less we think about what we eat, the worse our diets may be -- especially if we default to snacking on so-called convenience foods that are high in sugar and saturated fats and low in nutrient-dense ingredients that sustain energy levels.

Persistent Nutrition Myths

Consider a few common myths about nutrition that can lead to "brain bonk" and low energy throughout the school day:

Myth: Proper nutrition is only about fueling a healthy body.

Food Fact: Don't forget about feeding your brain! The brain consumes calories, too, about 600 per day on average. Food choices that support cardiovascular health -- a diet primarily consisting of non-starchy vegetables and fruits, healthy oils and fats, a variety of protein sources, and selected whole grains -- are also good for the brain and may enhance cognitive functioning across the lifespan.

Myth: Loading up on carbs provides a reliable source of sustained energy.

Food Fact: The calories from added sugar and refined starches and grains may produce a brief energy surge -- one that quickly fades to lethargy. Reducing the consumption of foods with added sugar, which includes many prepared foods and snacks, is the top recommendation in the newly-released 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Myth: Fats are bad.

Food Fact: The updated Dietary Guidelines continue to advise limiting the consumption of saturated fats, found primarily in red meats and dairy products. However, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which are key ingredients in the much-touted Mediterranean diet, have been found to have positive effects on blood cholesterol levels. Seeds, nuts, olive oil, and avocados are ready sources of monounsaturated fats, while fish such as salmon and albacore tuna contain polyunsaturated fats, including omega-3 fatty acids that may also support brain functioning. Fats increase the feeling of satiety and help to keep hunger pangs at bay. This means that fewer total calories might be consumed over the course of a day.

Myth: Meaty meals are the best sources of protein.

Food Fact: Nutritional researchers are in wide agreement that most Americans rely too heavily on red and processed meats as their primary sources of protein. Another red flag comes from a recent World Health Organization report linking regular consumption of red and processed meats to an increased risk of cancer. You can add more healthy sources of protein by planning meals that include seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, legumes like beans and peas, and nuts, seeds, and soy products.

A Healthy Start to the Day

Applying these recommendations, let's take a fresh look at what recent research reveals about eating the right foods at the right time to optimize brain performance. Beginning with a healthy breakfast can mean the difference between a full morning of energetic teaching and starting to feel droopy by 10AM. At the beginning of some of our professional development sessions, we ask participating teachers about their breakfast habits. A common response runs along these lines: a bowl of cereal with a sprinkle of sugar and fat-free milk, a glass of orange juice, and maybe a bagel. When their energy starts to lag mid-morning, they grab a carton of low-fat yogurt -- and wonder why they are starving by lunchtime.

The reality is that this breakfast is heavy on carbs and low on nutrient-dense foods. In contrast, a vegetable omelet with a cup of coffee or tea provides ample fuel to keep the brain firing all the way to lunch, when recharging with a palm-sized portion of protein such as chicken or fish, along with a colorful salad topped with an olive oil-based dressing, can keep you rolling strong.

We're pleased to see that the new Dietary Guidelines are consistent with our work over the past 20 years of analyzing research on nutrition and its impact on human performance, especially for educators and their students. In our live events with thousands of educators over the years, our work on the impact of nutrition on the body-brain system is one of the components that participants tell us they most appreciate.

For further reading:

Conyers, M., & Wilson, D. (2015). Positively Smarter: Science and Strategies for Increasing Happiness, Achievement, and Well-Being. West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell.

See the recommendations for the Healthy Eating Plate from the Harvard School of Public Health.

2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans from the USDA.

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Feeding the Teacher's Brain: Nutrition Tips for Busy Educators

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Teaching is a cognitively complex profession. In the course of a single school day, an educator must make hundreds of decisions and respond quickly to the myriad unexpected turns that life in the classroom may take. You have a high-energy job, so it's essential to prime your brain and body with the right fuel.

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Author Minero discusses the importance of creating an atmosphere where children feel comfortable talking about their feelings in the classroom. One such classroom, that of year 3 teacher Amy Gaunt, does so by developing a "wellbeing framework" which "increases students' confidence, voice, and problem-solving skills."

Click Here to read about how to develop a wellbeing framework in your own school or classroom!

Minero, E. (2016, September 15). A Curriculum for Emotional Awareness. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.edutopia.org/practice/wellbeing-developing-empathy-emotional-awareness-and-agency

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How It's Done

Start With a Wellbeing Framework

When creating a wellbeing curriculum, start with an existing framework, and customize it to your students' needs. School 21 uses a U.K.-based wellbeing framework called Personal, Social, Health, and Economic ( PSHE) education. "It's a great basis to go to for ideas, but we take from that what this group of children needs," explains Gaunt. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning ( CASEL) is a similar, U.S.-based resource.

Throughout the year, School 21 covers six big topics -- one per a six- to eight-week term:

1. School as a community

2. What makes me special?

3. How can I be a responsible citizen in the world?

4. Diversity

5. Healthy lifestyles

6. Social skills

Throughout the term, teachers delve into a subtopic each week. For example, within the term on Diversity, they will spend a week exploring Why are we unique? Through discussion, students explore these subtopics further with questions like:

What makes us the same and what makes us different?

Is it OK to be different?

Should we all be treated the same?

What is prejudice?

How can we respect each other?

At the beginning of each week, teachers introduce the wellbeing topic at an assembly consisting of two year groups [grade levels]. Then, in their weekly wellbeing class, they use a grounding text to further explore the theme with students, and at the end of the week, they gather in a smaller, one-year group assembly to wrap up the topic. Throughout the year, they assess their students using the wellbeing progression chart.
Related Article: The Power of Redesigning the Traditional Assembly
Discuss the Needs of Your Students to Create Your Curriculum

At the beginning of each year, School 21 teachers gather and create a wellbeing curriculum specific to their students' needs. "Get together with other teachers and think about what the needs of the children are," advises Gaunt. "Start from there."

Last year, these educators noticed that their students were blaming their peers and parents frequently. In response, they spent a term focusing on responsibility. "We looked at how children can take responsibility for their actions and different tasks," remembers Gaunt, "and what their own, their teachers', and their families' responsibilities are."
Related Article: Social and Emotional Learning: A Schoolwide Approach
Create Opportunities for Discussion

A core element of the wellbeing curriculum is the idea that discussion and speaking lead to wellbeing. If students have the opportunity to discuss their feelings -- and hear how others feel -- it contributes to feeling seen and heard, and it develops their understanding and empathy of others' experiences. Discussion (or " oracy " as it's called at School 21) is central to wellbeing curriculum.

School 21 schedules daily assembly periods to discuss wellbeing topics. If your school doesn't have daily assemblies or a weekly wellbeing course, the important factor is that you're giving your students opportunities to discuss their feelings and beliefs, emphasizes Gaunt. You may be able to do this in advisory or homeroom, or through incorporating intentional discussion throughout your classes -- such as picking a particular book to explore in English or an event in history.
Related Article: Building SEL Skills Through Formative Assessment
The following exercises can help you promote discussion:

Give your students concrete ways to discuss abstract ideas. "Culture is quite an abstract idea," acknowledges Gaunt. "It's something that's all around us, but if you say to a six- or seven-year-old, 'What is culture?' they're not going to have an idea. We wanted to give them concrete examples of how we might see culture. So we looked at clothes, music, food, and stories." In their assembly, they grouped in smaller circles and were given an artifact that represented a specific culture (like an article of clothing) to talk about. "They had to identify what it was, explain why it's important, and who it might be important to, and then as a larger group, they compared the different cultures being discussed."

Use controversial statements. If your topic is culture, have your students debate a statement like, some cultures are better than others. To develop empathetic responses, start by scaffolding with simpler questions to help build students' ideas around the theme before getting into more controversial statements. "Have students pair up and take each side of the argument before they find common ground," recommends Oli de Botton, School 21's co-founder and head teacher.

In an assembly, Eysha, a Year 3 student, shared her opinion in response to the statement about culture: "If everyone from one country was for one culture, and another country was for another culture, we wouldn't know about any cultures except our own. There's lots of cultures in London, and if all these cultures weren't here, it wouldn't be a colorful place."

Incorporate drama techniques to engage students in discussion. School 21 invented a fictional character -- Colin Chaos, played by a teacher -- who appears during assemblies to act out different scenarios. "It's easier to communicate key school messages through character and humour," advises Peter Hyman, a co-founder and executive head teacher. Through forum theater, a drama technique "where the audience decides what the actors should do next," explains Hyman, they'll discuss topics like responsibility, and have the students take on roles (like Colin's mother) to act out and communicate how to work through and discuss different issues.

Initiate discussion with a stimulus, such as a grounding text. Provide your students with a video, image, or written text, and use that as a starting point for a student-led discussion. School 21 has weekly 40-minute Philosophy for Children ( P4C) classes, a framework that helps students generate their own questions and circle discussions around a particular topic (like diversity or responsibility) using a grounding text.
Related Article: Oracy: The Literacy of the Spoken Word
"We want our children to have power and control over their lives, a sense of belonging, and to feel that they can grow here," adds de Botton. "We want to give them experiences and support to do all of those things."

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When creating a wellbeing curriculum, start with an existing framework, and customize it to your students' needs. School 21 uses a U.K.-based wellbeing framework called Personal, Social, Health, and Economic ( PSHE) education. "It's a great basis to go to for ideas, but we take from that what this group of children needs," explains Gaunt.

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In this article, author Donna Wilson lists some of the benefits of integrating physical activity into the regular school day. Some of these benefits include increasing oxygen to the brain (which helps students learn), decreasing fidgetiness, and increasing concentration and positive outlook. Some of the ways she suggests teachers integrate movement into the classroom are as follows: start with a morning warmup, play games, make lessons kinesthetic, and take stretch/movement breaks between lessons.

Wilson, D. (2014, March 12). Move Your Body, Grow Your Brain. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/move-body-grow-brain-donna-wilson

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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When we think of safety in terms of elementary children, usually we think about preventing broken bones, scrapes, and bruises on the playground. This article, however, takes an important look at another venue in which we must keep our kids safe-- the internet. The author tells that, since children are spending time online at younger and younger ages, we must take earlier preventative measures to teach them internet safety. Hertz lists three important things to consider when teaching elementary internet safety:

1. Stranger danger doesn't automatically transfer from the real world to the internet world for children, it must be instilled in them.

2. Because the internet is globally collaborative, we cannot simply tell children to avoid strangers. Rather, we must teach them how to recognize and avoid the wrong kind of internet strangers.

3. Children cannot run away from the strangers on the internet--- these strangers are in their own homes.

Hertz, M. B. (2017, September 28). How to Teach Internet Safety to Younger Elementary Students. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/internet-safety-younger-elementary-mary-beth-hertz

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How to Teach Internet Safety to Younger Elementary Students

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A lesson plan for helping students as young as kindergarten begin to understand how to be safe online.

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The Title-- Teach Mindfulness, Invite Happiness-- says it all. By teaching students how to be mindful, to live in the present moment "with kindness and curiosity," we can help them fight the anxiety and depression that is running more and more rampant among the youth of our society today. Author and teacher Erin Sharaf explains that she begins teaching mindfulness to her students by introducing the triangle of awareness-- which includes thoughts, emotions, and sensation-- then by moving into breathing exercises. This, she explains, strengthens the connection between mind and body-- a connection which many are lacking in today's day and age.

Sharaf, E. (2015, July 29). Teach Mindfulness, Invite Happiness. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/teach-mindfulness-invite-happiness

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Teaching students mindfulness can help them counteract the negative emotions and low self-esteem associated with a culture of standardized testing.

By objective measures, our young people are more anxious, more depressed, and have more psychopathology in general than students did a few decades ago. This has important implications for educators, school administrators, and society at large. What if our traditional school systems are unwittingly contributing to the problem -- and what if a relatively simple practice could help?

Sense of Failure

As we are all well aware, the current educational system is narrowing its definition of what defines student success. It's almost all cognitive knowing, as evidenced by standardized testing. The pros and cons of that system have been widely debated, so I won't rehash them here. However, a side effect of this system is decreased flexibility in how we define success, and we are leaving many students with internal beliefs that they are failures.

A young person could be a prodigy in one or more areas (kinesthetic, inter-personal, musical, ecological), yet still grow up thinking that he or she is a failure based on messaging given by the schools. As some students' light dims and self-doubt grows, there's a good chance that they won't grow into their full brilliance and power. This is a tragic outcome that's a loss for all of us -- yet it's also an avoidable outcome.

How Mindfulness Can Help

Mindfulness is a way of paying attention to present-moment experience and doing so with kindness and curiosity. It is not cognitive but sensory, and so taps into and strengthens different but vitally important parts of the brain that have been neglected by traditional education. One crucial attribute of mindfulness is that it is practiced without judgment. Many of our students are so hard on themselves and their internal critic is so loud that just a few moments of being given permission to not judge can bring huge relief to body and mind. I have seen it bring students to tears.

Just a few weeks ago, I was introducing the practice to some graduate students in a highly competitive health sciences program. Presumably they were all successes in the conventional system. I started by explaining the triangle of awareness to them -- how thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations all affect each other. I then led them through a guided contemplation to illustrate the point. They were invited to imagine a stressful situation and notice how they were feeling in their body, what emotions they were experiencing, and what thoughts they were having. By noticing the thoughts as the final step in the process, students can identify them as just thoughts they're having and not truths that must be believed, especially if these thoughts are causing unpleasant physical sensations and negative emotions.

We then did a five-minute mindful breathing exercise. The students closed their eyes and were invited to let the sensation of breathing command their full attention. When they noticed their attention wandering, they were allowed to notice where it went, but were encouraged to gently and kindly escort their awareness back to the breath.

During the discussion after the practice, one young woman was in tears. She had noticed her thoughts telling her that she was probably breathing wrong and wasn't good at it. This led to tightness in her chest, her heart racing, and a feeling of anxiety. In those few minutes, she recognized how her thoughts have been contributing to her anxiety all these years and also causing discomfort in her body. The ridiculousness of not being good at breathing revealed to her in stark clarity how insidious and unfair her inner critic was. She was excited to have made this connection and to have new tools for working with it.

Honoring True Genius

I think this anecdote illustrates what is going on for many of our students. Sadly, many of them never make the connection between mind and body, and just keep sinking into those self-defeating thoughts as they worry about how they will measure up on the next standardized test. These thoughts are contributing to the rise in mental illness and inhibiting students from reaching their full human potential.

There is now ample evidence that mindfulness practice enhances positive emotions (PDF). Imagine the possibilities if we offered this to young people with developing brains! What if we helped all students make this simple connection and gave them the tools to strengthen their own inner knowing? What if we gave them permission to honor their true genius, even if we can't measure it on a standardized test? What if we practiced full disclosure and acknowledged that there are many different kinds of intelligence, and that some cannot be measured by conventional means? What if schools gave equal time and emphasis to cultivating things like kindness and compassion?

It might just change everything.

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Teaching students mindfulness can help them counteract the negative emotions and low self-esteem associated with a culture of standardized testing. By objective measures, our young people are more anxious, more depressed, and have more psychopathology in general than students did a few decades ago. This has important implications for educators, school administrators, and society at large.

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In this article, author Karen Kane explains that as self-harm in students becomes more prevalent, teachers must educate themselves on how to handle students who may be facing this difficult struggle. She explains that teachers can play a critical role in the wellbeing of students struggling with self-harm, and details 12 steps teachers can take to intervene. These 12 steps are as follows:

1. Take action (immediately-- once a self-harm habit has formed, it is difficult to break)
2. Know the signs (cuts in lines on arms or inside of legs, picking at scabs, hair-pulling, head banging, and burns)
3. Trust your instincts
4. Get the facts
5. Rely on professionals (school counselor, social worker, admin)
6. Show you care
7. Create a safe space for all
8. Just be there
9. Give yourself a break (don't blame yourself)
10. Limit access to sharp objects
11. Teach healthy coping strategies
12. Review and revise school policies

Kane, K. (2018, November 18). What to Do When a Student Self-Harms - WeAreTeachers Advice. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.weareteachers.com/student-self-harm/

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Recently in the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook, a fifth grade teacher wrote: "Help! My principal told me that one of my girls is cutting herself. It turns out she cut herself once in my classroom and I missed it. Her mother is being told today. Any advice? I know nothing about how to support a student who self-harms."

Educators often face situations that fall well outside of the scope of teaching and are beyond the training they received in school. Knowing how to support a student who self harms can be a daunting responsibility for anyone.

The reality, though, is that more and more teachers are getting that on the job training in real-time as the instances of self-harm increase. According to Screening for Mental Health, Inc., self-injury is one of the least understood risky adolescent behaviors and is growing at an alarming rate. An estimated 12 to 37 percent of adolescents engage in self-harming behavior.

Several WeAreTeachers HELPLINE members with first-hand experience chimed in to offer advice on what to do.

1. Take action.

"As an educator, and mother of a daughter who has extensively self-harmed," HELPLINE member Jenn M. says to "take action immediately. Once a cutting habit has been formed, it is extremely difficult to break. If you suspect your student is self harming, please take a special interest because you absolutely can make a tremendous difference."

2. Know the signs.

Students who self-harm are good at hiding it. You can keep your radar tuned for signs of the most common forms of self-injury, which include cuts that are in lines on arms or legs, repeatedly picking at scabs, eraser burns, using matches or cigarettes to burn the body, hair-pulling, head banging, and punching walls or self.

HELPLINE member Ruth F.C. says, "I watch closely for those types of behaviors and report them immediately."

3. Trust your instincts.

According to Educators and Self Injury, which is an excellent resource for teachers with questions about self-harm, "The number one thing to remember is that you should not ignore anything suspicious. If your gut instinct tells you that something is going wrong with a particular student, follow up on it."

4. Get the facts.

Cutting, also know as non-suicidal self-injury, can be difficult to understand. The Savvy Psychologist offers 4 Surprising Facts about Cutting and Self-Harm to help you come to terms with the student's behavior.

5. Rely on the professionals.

Several teachers responded with the same well-informed advice to "let the counselor, social worker, and/or admin handle all the professional stuff."

One teacher added, "She just needs you to be there and be the constant. I had a cutter when I taught fifth grade. She told me it was happening. To let the admin and core team know, I walked her myself to the office and gave her a hug on the way. When she came back I told her that if she ever wanted to talk I would be there for her, and I wouldn't push her to talk if she wasn't ready. But I did move her desk so I could see her at all times."

6. Show you care.

Amy L.B. suggests, "There is most likely nothing you can do directly. Instead be a consistent and supportive teacher for her, and listen to her when she wants to talk or vent. She just needs to know that there are adults out there who care and support her. The direct help should be done by professionals trained for that sort of thing."

7. Create a safe space for all.

School Counselor and Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) Lauren Frankenbach echoes the importance of making students in your class feel cared about and safe. "Teachers can have a huge impact on the well-being of their students by creating an environment that makes them feel emotionally, physically, and psychologically safe. Every day."

She adds, "That means offering support and help when students need it, but also setting clear boundaries about not tolerating name calling or any unkind behavior."

8. Just be there.

One university student who is studying to become a teacher shared, "I was a child who self harmed and honestly the last thing I ever wanted was to be cornered about it by adults. I had one teacher who let me know she knew in a very subtle way and was just a constant support for me. She always had an open door policy, was always open to chat even about nothing, which is what I needed a lot."

"That teacher was the best thing that ever happened to me and probably the only reason I got through school. Next year I will graduate university as a teacher and she is and always will be a shinning example to me of the importance of teachers. Just be there for support. That's the most important thing you could ever do."

Another HELPLINE responder put that recommendation to work recently with a student who was cutting. "This literally just happened to a child in my class, so I invited her to sit in a nice spot on campus and told her that I think she is a beautiful, talented, and intelligent girl. I wanted her to know she has someone on her side and if she wants to talk, I'm here for her."

"We also discussed some ideas for things she could get involved in after school. Thankfully we have a fantastic school psychologist who already assessed her. We are referring her for a special service where she can learn some coping strategies. I'm just thankful to be able to let her know I'm here to talk anytime she wants. That's the biggest thing we can do for our students when they are hurting and need someone."

9. Give yourself a break.

"Don't blame yourself if you miss the signs of a student cutting in your classroom," says teacher Nicole B. "There is no way to see everything that happens all of the time."

Nicole also suggests that having a place where any student can go if they need a break (office, counselor, another teacher's room) can help diffuse overwhelming stress or anxiety. "Encouraging students to write or draw about their feelings in a notebook can also help."

10. Limit access to sharp objects.

Abigail D. shared a reminder to "make sure the student doesn't have access to sharp objects in class." This advice is prudent for all students. Keep close tabs on scissors, pencil sharpeners, and tools used in art classes and maker spaces. While students may have legitimate reasons to use them in class, they should be well supervised, and the supplies should be counted and secured when not in use.

Alison S. adds, "Be aware that those small pencil sharpeners break apart and there is a razor blade inside that self harmers use to cut."

11. Teach healthy coping strategies.

Teacher Eli says, "Keep an eye on her. Try to get her to hang out with positive influences. Teach her how to cope. Teach her how to ask for help and talk out her problems."

Teaching your whole class healthy ways to deal with stress can benefit struggling students without addressing them directly. However, experts advise not to speak about cutting or other self-harming behavior in a group or class setting. "Exposing kids to the knowledge can be a trigger," says Frankenbach.

12. Review and revise your school policies.

The Educators and Self-Injury author Dr. Laura Mueller offers a free e-book download on the website that includes a template for school protocol, forms for notifying parents, and more. Also consider sharing this SOS Self-Injury Packet with your school administrators and healthcare professionals.

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What to Do When a Student Self-Harms - WeAreTeachers Advice

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Recently in the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook, a fifth grade teacher wrote: "Help! My principal told me that one of my girls is cutting herself. It turns out she cut herself once in my classroom and I missed it. Her mother is being told today. Any advice?

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Author Holly Korbey shares some alarming statistics about vaping among students: 50% more students vape than smoke, 1 in 4 high school seniors vapes, and vaping rates among high-schoolers tripled between 2013 and 2014. She says one of the most detrimental misconceptions is the belief that vaping is not bad for your health just because it is an alternative to cigarettes. She offers some strategies for curbing this vaping epidemic in schools, including social-emotional learning tactics like teaching self-control, problem solving, and communication, as well as peer to peer education.

Korbey, H. (2018, June 29). Schools Respond to the Rise of Student Vaping. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.edutopia.org/article/schools-respond-rise-student-vaping

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Schools Respond to the Rise of Student Vaping

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Easy to conceal in hoodies and hands, vaping takes a foothold among youth. Schools look for solutions.

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Promoting an Alcohol/Drug Free Lifestyle

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Promoting an Alcohol/Drug Free Lifestyle

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In her article "Responding to Students With Addiction." Emily Donahue offers important information on what addiction is and what we can do to help. Addiction, she tells us, is more than 50% attributed to genetic factors-- it is a disease, not a choice, even if someone did make the choice to try something for the first time. It can feel like a temporary solution to concurring illnesses such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD-- but it sometimes manifests just on its own.

To help students we may see struggling with drug/alcohol addiction, Donahue tells that it is important to know when consequences hurt and when they help. Consequences may help first time offenders, but addicts typically do not feel a choice in their behavior, therefore punishments do not often create long-lasting change. Instead, show students struggling with addiction kindness and motivate them to look toward their future. One student, Donahue tells, was even taken to his first recovery meeting by his Dean-- an act of kindness that he reflected on later in his years of getting sober.

Donahoe, E. (2019, February 13). Responding to Students With Addiction. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.edutopia.org/article/responding-students-addiction

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Supporting students with drug and alcohol dependency isn't easy-but some strategies are more helpful than others.

Young people who repeatedly get caught using alcohol and drugs are often labeled as "troubled," "bad influences," or "kids who are making bad choices." Maybe an adult in the picture recognizes that a student might have a problem, but it can be difficult for that adult to understand why the student doesn't seem to want to get better.

As educators, we have a job to do-and not many options for helping students like these without also having to punish them. How can we better support students who might be struggling with alcoholism and addiction?

What Is Addiction?

Yes, each individual makes that first choice to pick up a drink or drug. But numerous studies suggest that up to 50 percent of a person's risk of becoming addicted can be attributed to genetic factors. For one teen, taking a drink is fun, relaxing, and enjoyable in moderation. For another, a drink is the missing link: It makes him feel more like himself, like he belongs-so the more, the better.

Although people abuse drugs for a variety of reasons, most experts agree that the persistent abuse of drugs or alcohol despite adverse consequences can be a primary disease. That is, addiction isn't always caused by something else, and you don't have to have a co-occurring disorder, like depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, to be afflicted. But even those who believe addiction is a disease often look at a person abusing drugs or alcohol and think: "You need to get this under control. Don't you know you're hurting yourself?"

For any caring educator, watching a young person destroy his or her future with drugs or alcohol is a problem. But for any addict-adolescent or otherwise-drugs and alcohol are a solution: to anxiety, depression, unresolved trauma, social angst, or any number of conditions that make daily life intolerable.

Since adolescents experience these feelings intensely, it's no wonder they are willing to sacrifice so much just to feel OK inside. That is: Using is not a choice when the alternative is not getting your deepest emotional needs met.

When and Why Consequences Don't Work

We know addicts are not deterred by consequences. Yet what do we do when a kid gets caught drunk or high at school again and again? We escalate the consequences. For a non-addict who gets caught vaping in the bathroom, a consequence will work.

But educators should recognize that a student who doesn't stop using despite getting in serious trouble, upsetting their parents, and disappointing their teachers has likely reached a point at which the choice to use is no longer really a choice.

How Consequences Can Help

It's disheartening when the only motivation a young person has to stop abusing drugs or alcohol is to stay out of trouble and keep adults off his back. A young person may abstain-or try to-for a brief time in order to avoid consequences or to please someone he cares about. But if the choice to stay clean isn't truly his own, it's more likely than not that he will relapse.

In these situations, however, we have a real opportunity to get out of the way and let substances become the user's problem, not ours. This means letting those consequences speak for themselves, without adding our two cents about "bad choices," how the student is hurting himself, or the like.

When administered fairly and kindly, without shame or judgement, consequences can keep an adolescent focused on her own behavior-and help her move closer to asking, "Is this really what I want my life to look like?"

The Road to Recovery

I have a friend who was taken to his first recovery meeting by the dean of students at his high school. He did not get sober for many years, but that act of kindness from a man who went out of his way to do something he absolutely did not need to do planted a seed that later flowered. Today, my friend is over 50 years old-and over 15 years sober.

We would never say to someone with a deadly disease, "It's on you to get better-stop making so many bad choices." Young adults can-and do-recover from addiction. But the hard truth is that for most teenage substance abusers, adolescence is just the beginning of a long, painful journey. As counterintuitive as it may seem, we need to show these students that we are not invested in whether they stop using-but we are 100 percent invested in them.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't express our fears or concerns. It only means that putting pressure-even positive pressure-on addicts to change does not help in the long run. Maybe we ask them about their using. Or maybe we just ask them about their weekend. We give consequences for their behavior, but we don't take that behavior personally. We can let them know recovery is possible and that we are there to help. As a result, they may open up to us more, and find healing just a little bit sooner.

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Supporting students with drug and alcohol dependency isn't easy-but some strategies are more helpful than others. Young people who repeatedly get caught using alcohol and drugs are often labeled as "troubled," "bad influences," or "kids who are making bad choices."