Over her twenty-two years of teaching, Kim Alexander’s goals have changed. Not only does she focus on covering the curriculum with her young students, she is also keenly aware of their mental health and has developed ways to create a safe place in the classroom where students feel that they are seen and heard and that what they say matters. As a result of her techniques to encourage young students to feel safe expressing themselves, they also do better academically.

In Creating a Safe Space in the Classroom: A Guide for Educators, you will learn how to build a safe environment in the classroom for learning and supporting mental health, maintaining this environment, and ways to support mental health through assertiveness techniques. Also covered are the signs a teacher can look for in the classroom that indicate various mental health disorders such as Anxiety, Depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Eating Disorders, and more. Other areas include the need to recognize all groups of students-Indigenous students, students of colour, newcomers to Canada, LGBTQ+ students, and students with special needs.