Well, the moment is almost upon you now.  The doors will be opening for the first time this year in a matter of days.  You have been running around like a chicken without a head for the past couple of weeks: last minute hires, preparing for orientation, meetings after meetings.  Are you ready?

More to the point, during this hectic time, you probably haven’t had a spare moment to think about opening day with your staff, and now it is almost upon you.  Need some last minute help to make that first staff meeting to make it a slam dunk? Keep reading for some valuable tips.

Your First Staff Meeting

How are you going to conduct that first staff meeting?  Is it going to be playful or are you going to get right down to business?  Perhaps you need to do a little of both. While you want to set everyone at ease by creating a congenial environment, it’s time to get down to work.

In a friendly, relaxed atmosphere you need to remind and reinforce the teachers of your overall objectives and how appreciative of the strides that have been made towards achieving them.  What can you accentuate about last year that will serve as the platform to upon which to build?

Be sure that your message reverberates with positivity and encouragement, finding every opportunity to compliment their strengths. And don’t forget to introduce new staff members, making them feel at home with their new team is vital for their comfort. Personalize that introduction.

While focusing on your new teachers, it is important to recognize the veterans in your staff and what happened in their lives over the summer; weddings, new babies, children going off to college, or special summer trips. This first meeting can be a wonderful opportunity for sharing and bonding.

How To Break The Ice and Build The Team

Mimicking has often been called the highest form of flattery.  So remember, if you want your teachers to build relationships with their students, you will need to build relationships with your teachers. And the relationships you need to develop with your teachers begins on Day One!

Let’s not be naive.  A warm smile or handshake isn’t going to do it by itself, but it is a good start.  You need to set the tone, which in your capacity as principal includes an open and mutually beneficial relationship with every one of your staff. You can begin that relationship at that first meeting.

Teletherapy and Other Innovations

While relationships with your teachers are critical, they are by no means enough.  Your teachers need to know that you are “with the program” by any measure, which includes your technology acumen. Take teletherapy for example. Your teachers will be impressed to see how you have solved speech-language needs with cutting edge technology.

Teletherapy has been shown to significantly bring top-quality clinicians to increasing number of students, especially in rural areas. Demonstrating concern for special needs children with awareness of technological advances such as teletherapy will build your staff’s confidence in you.

Bottom Line

Face it, and there are a plethora of distractions the first few days.  But with careful planning and focusing upon the bigger picture, you are bound to make the first day or two as constructive as possible, setting the tone for your best year so far.

According to recent research, mental health in America is a greater problem in rural than in urban areas.  Take older adults for example. Anywhere between 10-25% of the elderly in rural areas is afflicted by mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression.

But the problem is not just the higher frequency of mental illness.  It is exacerbated by the fact that many of these people opt not to seek treatment and instead suffer in silence.  The question is why?

Shame

It was revealed in a recent study conducted by researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine which involved nearly 500 adults 60 and above in rural North Carolina that the most common barrier to receiving necessary help was the shame- the conviction that “I shouldn’t need help.”

 

Stigma, which most understand to mean that there is something shameful, is often felt more acutely in rural communities due to the built-in lack of anonymity. Whereas in the city no one has a clue when someone is going for help, in the town just about everyone knows whose car is parked outside of the therapist’s office.

 

Compounding the stigma and the shame is often the lack of mental health education available to those in rural areas.  Ignorance of what mental health problems are and what they are not combined with generational prejudices and the hype in the media regarding violent acts allegedly stemming from mental health problems, prove to be a potent mix that only increases the shame.

 

Shortages

To make things worse, even when the stigma can be surmounted, is there anyone to go to for help?  And even if services can be found, they are often too limited to be of any real consequence. The likelihood of finding a mental health professional in the community trained to deal with many of the problems found there is at times quite small.

 

Unfortunately, there are mental health practitioners in rural areas treating people, both children and adults, that lack adequate training. Aside from attending a weekend seminar or perhaps watching some YouTube videos online, they have no formal academic training that has prepared them for the types of problems they will face.

 

Solutions

Part of the answer may lay in encouraging students in Rural America to pursue the field of Mental Health as a career. Getting more rural practitioners begins with laying the groundwork to captivate more of the youth. Combining their experiences and innate sensitivities regarding Rural America could prove to be a powerful combination.

 

But there may be a simpler solution. Remote mental health therapy known as teletherapy holds excellent promise for Rural America. Cutting edge technology has provided the means to have top-quality therapists living in large metropolitan areas to deliver state of the art mental health therapy to those in rural areas which is both convenient and affordable and could do much to ameliorate the shame.

 

A Call to Action

There are no quick fixes to solving the problems and challenges facing rural communities regarding mental health. Some of these problems are indigenous to growing mental health crisis in the nation as a whole while others are borne of the complexities germane to Rural America.

 

But one thing is sure. We can no longer close our eyes and hope the problems will somehow magically disappear. Until we accept the reality, become more resourceful, and remain steadfastly determined nothing much will change, and those who are so much in need will continue to suffer, often in silence.

Is your school looking to explore the benefits of teletherapy? Schedule your free demo today.