The library is where they go. Who checks in on you?
If you or someone you know needs support, help is available. Lifeline is available 24 hours a day on 13 11 14, or by text on 0477 13 11 14. The Beyond Blue Support Service is available 24 hours a day on 1300 22 4636. In an emergency, call 000.
Thursday 10 September is R U OK?Day. This year the message is Ask R U OK? Any Day, which is a deliberate shift. The point is no longer the date. The point is that the question should not need one.
So this is not a post about checking in on your students. You already do that. It is a post about the fact that almost nobody checks in on you.
The room they choose
Every school has a room that students choose when the rest of the day is not working.
It is not the office. It is rarely the playground. It is the library.
It is quiet, it has a door, nobody is being marked, and there is someone behind the desk who knows their name and knows what they read. Students turn up at lunch and stay. They turn up between classes and do not really want a book. They turn up because it is the one place in the school where nothing is being asked of them.
None of that is in anybody's position description. It is not timetabled, it is not counted, and it does not appear in a report. It just happens, every day, in the same room.
The person holding the door open
Here is the part that gets missed.
School libraries are very often run by one person. One person doing the catalogue, the circulation, the displays, the reading programs, the overdues, the budget, the book club and the lunchtime drop ins. There is no team to hand the hard days to, and there is frequently nobody above them who understands the role well enough to ask how it is going.
So the person who holds the door open for everybody else can go a very long time without anybody holding it open for them.
That is the whole reason we are writing this.
What R U OK? is actually asking of us
R U OK? has published research on why the question does not get asked, and the finding worth sitting with is this one.
A third of people do not realise the difference it makes to check in on someone they care about, despite the fact that 9 in 10 of those who were asked "are you OK?" report feeling grateful, cared about and supported. And 1 in 4 people hesitate to ask, even when they already think someone is struggling. R U OK? sets all of this out on their R U OK?Day page.
Read that again. The problem is not that people do not care. The problem is the hesitation.
Which means the useful thing on Thursday is not a poster. It is one person deciding not to hesitate.
How to have the conversation
This is where we stop and hand over, because R U OK? are the ones qualified to say it.
R U OK? recommend a four step approach they call ALEC: Ask, Listen, Encourage action, and Check in. The detail on each step, including what to say and what to avoid, is on their site here: Ask R U OK? Any Day resources.
They also publish free posters, videos, conversation guides, activity planners and presentation templates, all of which can be used in a school, a staffroom or a library. Those are on the same page, and they cost nothing.
If you want something for the wall, get it from them rather than from us. It will be better, and it will be right.
One thing you could do on Thursday
Not for a student. For the person two doors down who is also running something on their own.
That is it. That is the whole ask.
Our mission at FSI is to empower education by championing the people who shape it. Usually that means building things. On Thursday it means saying the quiet part out loud.
The library is where they go when they are not OK.
Somebody should be asking you.