"The cost of being a student at Palo Alto High School"

"I challenge you to find more than a dozen students on campus who wake up each morning excited for the material they will learn that day in all their classes. Rather, they are more likely dreading the impending note-taking and piling-up of work that will greet them.

This regression from learning for the sake of learning to learning for the sake of a grade has also led to a rise in the great elephant in the room: cheating.

Few teachers are aware of the reality where many students hastily copy a peer’s assignment five minutes before it is due. But why couldn’t this student just do their own homework? Because they spent the whole night completing a project and only got five hours of sleep. So as a sacrifice they chose not to do their homework for another class, copied the information they were supposed to learn as if they were a computer and as a result failed to learn the actual material. And this cycle will continue for days, weeks and years. This is the cycle that has taken a toll on the well-being of our students...

Even worse is the fact that students are not recognized for the pressure they place on themselves. Rare is the case when a teacher pulls a student aside after class and congratulates them for improving their grade on a recent test — which may be a result of studying for five hours, unbeknownst to the teacher. Students feel underappreciated and may not even realize it because methodically doing work has become so innate...

The importance of mental health should not be overlooked. Rather it should be reinforced by things as simple as encouraging students to go out and have a good time and live a little." 

http://www.palycampanile.org/archives/3275#sthash.lLmV2Uy7.dpuf

I am there for this last point. One big thing that I missed moving from a private school to public school was that the teachers stopped praising us. It was such a lovely and calming thing for a teacher to say "I am glad to be here, teaching you, because you are great students". In contexts where a LOT is expected of students, it's important to let students know that you think of them as people who have demonstrated themselves to be capable.