Lost amongst all the national & global news that draws eyeballs w its headlines abt: the p@ndemlc, war, twitter’s pending acquisition, etc., are some positive stories like this one – that may be happening on a local level, but deserve much greater media attention bc of the magnitude of the changes taking place.
May is MH Awareness Month, this law was just put into effect for teachers in Illinois, yesterday, & yet you’d have to search pretty hard to find this article…or coverage of this positive change, most anywhere.
The Illinois Education Association: during a meeting Wednesday of last wk as this law was being discussed, shared poll numbers that showed 1 in 3 teachers in Illinois are ready to quit the profession. Think abt what teachers have been thru the past 2+ yrs…& please try to keep feelings abt politics & unions out of it.
Teachers have been thru their own stress & traumas from the pandemic, & well as those of their students & families…& all the change & transition. That’s layers & layers of “stuff.” And being in the schools as much as we are, we see it on the teachers’ faces. We have “SameHere Sound Offs” w our Social Workers. This group is struggling.
From the Illinois senator who sponsored the bill, Meg Loughran Cappel from Shorewood: “As society continues to increase the importance of addressing mental health as part of health care, we must ensure that our teachers have the ability to address issues they are dealing with. It’s vital that we give them the time they need to unplug and focus on their mental well-being.”
This new law allows teachers to use two of their days per school yr as mental health days, & says if a teacher needs three or more MH days, the school district will require a note from a MH professional.
We can debate the semantics- if 2 is enough. If the note should be required for 3 or more. But the fact is, even making ANY MH days part of the “acceptable & recognized reasons” for absences is a step in the rt direction. In states like this all over the world, teachers have been taking MH days for literally centuries. But they just haven’t called them that. Now they can. Normalization.
