It’s not easy to walk into a classroom in 2025. Maria Modzelewski, is the Director of Special Education for the Iroquois School District explained, “When kids come to school they have other things in their backpacks, besides, notebooks, pens and pencils, so they carry some trauma, stress, anxiety.”
Which is why schools like Iroquois decided to invest in mental health resources and services. According to Modzelewski, “Students are presenting with increased mental health needs and it effects our day to day programming and functioning within the school district. So we have students showing up and we are mandated to educate them. We don’t have the option to say, ‘you know what?’, go get yourself set, when you feel like you are a little more grounded and emotionally regulated, why don’t you come back and learn. We don’t have that.”
Besides having various counselors, psychologists, and mental health professionals on staff, they also try to educate their students on the benefits of talking about how they feel…