There is a student I want to tell you about.
She was in Grade 7. She arrived a few weeks into the school year—new country, new language, new everything. For three weeks, she did not speak. Not in class. Not in the hallway. Not at lunch.
Her teacher later told me, “At first I thought she was shy. Then I wondered if the language was more challenging than it appeared. Then I started to worry.”
Nothing was wrong.
This student was not disengaged. She was watching to see if it was safe.
How many students are doing that in your classroom right now?
I work as a child and adolescent psychiatrist. Each week, I sit in case conferences with teachers, often when a student is returning to school after a crisis, or when something simply is not adding up. What I have noticed, consistently, is this:
Teachers already see more than they think.
You notice the student who laughs a moment too late. The one who is always tired. The one who is quiet in a way that feels different from temperament.
You are reading the room, reading the child and adjusting in real time.
What is often missing is not instinct, but language, time and permission to act on what you already see.
Children do not arrive at school alone. They bring with them their own emotional life. Sometimes that shows up as anxiety or withdrawal. Sometimes as perfectionism or defiance. Sometimes, it looks like silence.
If we only ask, “What is wrong with this student?” we miss the fuller picture.
A more useful question may be, “What is this student carrying?”
That shift matters. Behaviour begins to make more sense when we can see the load beneath it.
The challenge, of course, is that the systems around you were not designed to hold this. Not the timetable, the reporting structures or the curriculum demands. And yet, every day, teachers hold it anyway, often quietly. That deserves to be acknowledged.
So rather than offering a new program or checklist, I want to name three things you are already doing:
See. Stay. Signal.
See is not diagnosing. It is noticing what may sit beneath a behaviour before deciding what it means. A student who is late again may not lack motivation; they may be coming from a home where mornings are unpredictable.
Stay speaks to your presence in a difficult moment. A regulated adult can shift the tone of a room without saying a word. Research on coregulation shows that students’ nervous systems respond to the adults around them. At times, the most powerful influence in the room is simply how you are.
Signal is how you open a door. Consider checking in with families in a way that invites partnership: “I’ve noticed the student seems a bit overwhelmed at times. Are you seeing that at home as well?” This lands differently than, “Your child is having difficulty….” The concern is the same, but the invitation is not. When families feel like partners rather than problems to be managed, they tend to share more. And when they share more, you are better positioned to support the student.
Back to that student.
Around week four, her teacher made one small change. Before calling on anyone, the teacher gave the class 30 seconds to think.
That was it.
Within two weeks, the student began to participate.
Not because of a program, but because one teacher recognized what was happening, stayed steady and made it safe for the student to show up.
Think of a student in your classroom, the one you cannot quite read. What might they be carrying?
You are not responsible for fixing what a student brings through the door. But you are already shaping how it is met. For many students, that moment is the one that stays with them.
Dr. Jamil Jivraj is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, clinical assistant professor at the University of Calgary, and keynote speaker on youth mental health. His writing appears on climbtogetherparenting.com.
Child and adolescent psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor