Simple Strategies to Support Learners' Mental Health
Embedded Files
By Edwina Moorhouse - February 2026
Is there a practical way to address the mental health of our young learners in the classroom? Moreover, are there simple strategies that anyone can adapt? In April 2025 I gave a talk at IATEFL with the goal of making teachers feel more empowered to support their learners, and also validate the changes and developments we’ve seen in young learners over the past few years.
Edwina at the 2025 IATEFL Conference
As a bit of background, I’m a secondary school teacher in Germany, and I teach young learners from roughly 12 to 18 years old. For anyone familiar with the German system, I also teach across two streams or tiers of school, Oberschule and Gymnasium. My talk came at the end of nearly two years of trial and error in the classroom: seeing a problem and trying to rise to the challenge. The reality is that the mental health of our young learners is a big issue – I don’t think we need to debate that – but I believed then, and I still believe now, that we can make a positive difference with small changes to begin with.
It’s safe to say that from a teaching perspective, the pandemic was exhausting. And the years after the pandemic? A steep learning curve. My journey to changing my teaching practice and becoming more invested in the topic of mental health started with a question in 2021: “What on earth is going on?” It was a feeling that all was not well with the teens I was teaching at the time. Since then, I’ve found evidence to support what was a gut feeling. The Robert Bosch Foundation surveyed teachers in 2022, and found that 81% had a problem with concentration in the classroom, nearly a third had observed anxiety in their students and 56% complained about restlessness. It’s so painfully relatable.
In my classes I saw, and continue to see, an increase in absences, more irritability, anxiety, more tears, more aggression, restlessness, reduced concentration … the list really does go on and on.
It got me thinking about my students’ needs, or better: their unmet needs. A quick look online will show you there is a wheel of “needs” inspired by the work of Marshall Rosenberg on non-violent communication. It serves as a good reminder of how, bluntly, young learners: they’re just like us. They need autonomy, empathy, honesty, and interdependence. What happens if those very human needs are not being met? The observations I’d made of my students’ struggles in the classroom, combined with the realisation that their behaviour could be demonstrating a very human need for something maybe as a simple as empathy, led me to the question: how can I support my students’ mental health, without straying too far from my role as English Language Teacher?
In my talk, I wanted to show the audience ways that I’d tried to reduce the anxiety and stress of my learners, as well as combat their restlessness and lack of motivation. Broadly speaking there are ‘practical’ easily implementable strategies, ready for your next lesson on Monday morning, but we also need to dig deep and in a more abstract sense, think about who we are as teachers and how we act with our students.
First and foremost, reducing in-class anxiety and peer related stress is a priority for me. I don’t want my students to be anxious in my lessons – they’ve already got enough of that outside the English language classroom. In addition to lots of positive reinforcement and praise I:
Don’t make students present in front of the class. No spoken assignments (dialogues, presentations…) need to be in front of their peers, they can do it alone with me.
Diversify assessment. Different types of assessments playing to different strengths: presenting, vocabulary (i.e. learning by heart), creative tasks like posters. Everyone should feel they can achieve and do well.
Frequently put on background music to encourage both concentration and relaxation.
Define boundaries with my students on the subject of smartphones. For example, there is a “phone garage” for their phones, and I encourage more low-tech lessons.
Educate my students on the negative side of smartphones and how it could be fuelling anxiety and peer related stress. With younger students this could be a project on cyberbullying, with more advanced learners this could be working with a documentary such as The Social Dilemma (2020).
Reducing stress and anxiety in the classroom is just the first step. Supporting our learners’ mental health means giving them the tools to help themselves too, which is why it’s important to also teach strategies for our students to reduce their own anxiety.
Journaling is a great practice that can reduce a learner’s overwhelm by getting their thoughts on paper, encourage self-reflection and greater self-awareness, and help them process their emotions. I like to get my students to do a “brain dump,” a gratitude list, a lyric log or have a “mindfulness moment.” My goal is to make them aware of journaling in the English lesson with the hope that they continue the practice when they are home.
I also teach my students strategies for before, during and after exams. I feel we have a responsibility to help them in their mental preparation for a test or exam – and not just prepare them for the content. For 12-13 years olds, who can often be overwhelmed as the “newbies” in the school, I have them do 2 minutes of five finger breathing before a test, and then give them a wordsearch and some coloured pens to help them wind down afterwards. As for the older students, I talk a lot about breathing techniques and mindfulness to get them ready for exams – speaking exams in particular.
Let’s leave the issue of anxiety and stress for a moment, and address the restlessness and lack of motivation. Something simple I’ve started to incorporate into my teaching practice is the value of movement and fresh air. Quite frankly, it improves the mental wellbeing of our learners – if only for that task, that lesson, that morning. I’ve made my classes do a 5-minute workout (with the help of Joe Wicks on YouTube) as a sort of brain break. The best-case scenario is that you’ll have endorphins released, mood improved and the lesson reset. Even if this doesn’t happen, they’ll have laughed (I guarantee!) – and laughter in itself is mood boosting. You can be creative with what kind of activity you do outside, depending on where you teach. I’ve come up with team relays involving vocabulary, or played an adapted version of the “crystal maze” with words hidden for them to find. Incorporating movement into my lessons to help my learners’ mental health has been the easiest change I’ve made. Which now brings me to what I have found hardest: how I’ve had to adapt, change, and grow as a teacher.
A primary school teacher once said to me “kids don’t cause problems, they have problems” and I reflect on this statement a lot. If we are to support our learners’ mental health, we need to be more empathetic. Not only that – we need to model empathy and teach empathy. We should also model vulnerability – say we’re sorry, or admit when we’re not in a good mood.
“kids don’t cause problems, they have problems”
“kids don’t cause problems, they have problems”
I approach my students with a “love and boundaries” attitude. Love meaning support, empathy, kindness and understanding. Boundaries reminding them that there is still a line in the sand; when it comes to school, they still have obligations to fulfil and there are behaviours that are not acceptable. If there’s a behavioural issue, I meet with them and encourage them to suggest a solution. A student-orientated solution, you could say. Don’t lower their self-esteem with punishments, but help them understand consequences. Talk it out and set goals.
We should make our neurodivergent learners feel seen. It could be something as simple as having the students present something about, or create posters for, Neurodiversity Celebration Week. Last year I had my 13–14-year-olds present a celebrity who had spoken on the topic, and then asked them to also think of suggestions of how they could help a classmate who is neurodivergent. It was a real highlight of the school year for me.
If you’ve read this far, then I can only hope that you don’t feel overwhelmed. But even if you do, that brings me to my last point and a foundational principle of supporting our learners.
Everything I have talked about is only possible if you have taken care of your own mental wellbeing. That you’ve slept well. That you’re not stressed. That you’re not close to burnout. Easier said than done! Everything I’ve written about is a snapshot of my teaching at its best – when I’m at my best. I certainly wasn’t doing this in my first year of teaching, I was just keeping my head above water.
I hope now you feel optimistic – and in these times it’s hard to feel optimistic. There’s a growing mental health crisis, and every week there seems to be something new to make us worry about learners (last year was certainly an eye-opener for many with the Netflix series “Adolescence”). But talking about it is the first step, and then one small, simple strategy at a time, we can support those who need it.
Google Sites
Report abuse