Another school year brings another set of classes where teachers have to share partial information about suicide and other mental health issues receiving no true training or support.
Today I showed students a three minute and forty-five second video that loosely touched on warning signs and I am not entirely sure what else. I had to talk to boys and thought now was the time to laugh and make fun of each other. My skin was already crawling because this topic puts me on edge. But to have kids laughing while others are visibly uncomfortable made it worse.
After separating the boys, the video was over. I opened the teacher’s lead discussion questions and just stared at them.
What is suicide?
Why is it important to talk about suicide?
What are some signs that someone might be thinking about suicide?
What should you do if you or someone you know is thinking about suicide?
Who are some people who can help if someone is thinking about suicide?
These questions were empty.
While I knew other teachers had no interest in engaging with their students on this topic, that wasn’t me. I’m still not sure how we can expect students to handle a heavy topic, gloss over important details, give them a pointless quiz, and then expect them to get back to their classwork. Just the same as if we asked them to color a dinosaur, not possible to trigger them. Fuck, they don’t even consider the teacher.
Before this year, teaching the subject was bearable, but this year I had to truly mentally prepare myself. Less than two years ago, I was staring at a lake, wondering how long it would take my family to miss me if I drowned myself.
So instead of turning the kids loose and leaving them to stew in whatever the mind funk the session left them in, I asked my own questions.
First, I asked how many had a friend tell them they wanted to kill themselves? More than I expected raised their hands. One of the annoying boys says “what if they were joking?” I asked “how many were serious?” The same hands stayed up. I called on a few students and asked them what they did. One said he didn’t leave his friend alone. The other said he showed his mom the messages and his mom talked to the student’s parents. I asked if the student was mad and mine said “yes but I’d do it again.”
They were the amazing friends that saved someone’s lives that day. It was better to have them mad at them rather than dead. But I apologized to them and the class that this wasn’t something that was going to go away. As they grew older, they would lose more people in their lives.
I told them the story of my friend Jeff, who took his own. How he was the most talented musician I knew. I explained that he always saw things with dark lenses and one day he viewed them through rose-colored glasses. A student asked, “isn’t that a good thing?” I said “no, because my friend in the years that I’ve known him had never been happy like that.” It was a major red flag. It was a personality change. I reminded them about how the video talked about personality changes, but it’s not always a dark and depressed person. I told them how to this day I wonder if my friend would be dead if I hadn’t lost his address. I remembered calling and calling his phone, texting him, asking what his address was. But there was no answer. Later, when I found out he took his life, I saw it was the day I was supposed to visit him.
I then asked how many students I had in this class that I taught in middle school. Then I asked them if they noticed anything different about me when I returned from my maternity leave. None of them said they did. Then somehow I verbalized that a few weeks after Bb’s birth, I wanted to take my life. Through tears, I told them how Adelyn came up and held my hand. She said “mommy I need you.” Those were the words that stopped me from wandering off.
A boy popped up and asked, “isn’t that postpartum depression?”
I said, “yes it was, still is.”
I explained that women can take around 5 years to return to their mental state.
There was a collective sigh in the group.
But I had to use this opportunity to reassure them that seeking help was okay. I shared with them how I’ve been through therapy and how it’s okay to get help. I also encouraged them to talk to their parents. That in a perfect world, their parents will always be there to help them and if they didn’t have their parents, there is a campus full of adults here to help them.
I shifted the focus to a new icon added by the student portal. This icon is called trusted adults. A few kids giggled at the idea. I told them it wasn’t dumb or pointless. The school wanted to make sure that the students understood they could talk to their teachers. I let them know that I’m always available if they need someone to talk to about issues that they couldn’t discuss with their parents. There would be no doubt that I would call them dumb, because most of the time it’s something super dumb. However, no matter what, I would encourage them to talk to their parents and help them figure out the best way to discuss it with them..
But I also clarified that I am a mandatory reporter. Reporting anything that happens to them or their friends is not just a legal obligation for me, but a commitment I will fulfill. Because I’d rather they be mad at me, but alive. I also suggested that if they ever get a message from their friends that they don’t know what to do about that, they could send it to me and I would be the one to report it. That way, they could genuinely tell their friends that they said nothing.
We eventually had to take the short quiz and fill out the worksheet.
After the bell rang, a few students came up to me and said thank you.
I don’t know if this was too much, but it felt necessary. I couldn’t leave them to stew or think suicide was something that only happened to sad people. Throughout the next four years, I wanted to ensure they were aware I was available to help and that I would be a supportive listener for them.
