Over on CBC Saskatchewan, Grade 11 student Fiona Babar wrote about her teacher, Andrew Foreman, sharing his story of living with OCD – and what it mean to her. Can’t say it much better than this:
As a student, I often made the assumption that teachers can never understand what I am going through as a teenager. How could someone that stands at the front of a class and talk for seven hours a day possibly understand? In that moment, Mr. Foreman took down that wall between himself as a teacher, with his own personal struggles, and us as students.
In the past, I’ve felt like I couldn’t talk about my own mental health. People aren’t comfortable with the topic. It hit me how Mr. Foreman had changed the narrative and turned our classroom into a place where people could comfortably ask questions, and get answers in a real and honest way.
“Mental health is like our physical health, some days we feel good physically, some days we don’t,” he later told me. “Just like some people have serious health problems, some of us have mental health disorders that are more problematic, more frequent, than some people are used to.”
The kids are okay (or are going to be).
Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 100 companies and more than 10,000 construction professionals better understand mental health. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.
