Rapport by: Kellen Pluntke

The emergences of various crisis across our country have ignited the discussion of mental health to a level that we have never seen before. The numbers of minors being diagnosed with mental health issues is still on the rise, and due to the lack of support and care for these people, major issues have continued to occur.  Now is the time to finally put emphasis on what we can do to help.  A solution to this problem needs to start hitting the grounds of our country if we want to prevent disasters like we have faced from occurring.  The best way to start this is to ensure that every child has a mental health professional (ideally) or at least an adult to speak to.  The emergence of school psychologists has been increasing at least in my area of the country, but they can only meet with so many students, and we all know that it would be far too complicated to change our medical system to allow all children to visit a mental health professional in our society without massive political reforms on all fronts.  This leaves us with one solution left, and that is to make sure every child has at least one adult that they can confide in.  The best way to do this is with their counselors and teachers in school.

            Rapport is something that I often bring up in the topic of education with it helping students feel more comfortable and all that, but this is much more than that.  Educators need to put emphasis on the importance of connecting with their students to better our society all together.  These broken souls that have decided to take the lives of the students around them into their own hands have all stated that they felt completely alone.  Coming from broken families, these individuals have a hard time at home and an even harder time in school.  If there was a teacher that they were able to confide in and talk about what they needed to keep going with their lives in a positive manner for themselves and those around them, these issues could have been avoided.

            This push on connection between student and teacher is one of the only ways we can help our country without having to go through the policies of politics.  I have many blogs in the past on how to initiate this kind of connection and rapport with students, so please check those out if you have not already.