Last week in testimony before Congress the actress Taraji P. Henson said:
“We in the African-American community don’t talk about mental health issues. We don’t even talk about it. We’ve been demonized for coming out saying that we have issues…and we have trust issues.”
Is any part of what Taraji said applicable to what we in the WL teaching community are experiencing? Or is everyone o.k.?
That’s a question that is easy for me to answer. I feel that depression is common in our profession, that we suffer but don’t talk about our mental health issues.
Taraji even suggested that mental health be put into schools as a course of study, like math or gym. I support that. I would take it a step further – since we now know how to teach using comprehensible input, the mental health piece will naturally be included in our daily instruction.
Of course, mental health has been THE prime focus of discussion here in the PLC for a few years now, as we have become more and more aware with each passing year that how we keep our minds right in our work is the most important thing of all.
As I now end my external pursuit of great ways/strategies to teach a language, happy with what I have discovered over a lifetime of trying, all of my attention is now turning to the issue of mental health in language teachers. I’m going to write about it a lot here this summer and into the future.
It’s time for us to learn how to become whole in this profession. It’s time for that.