New program designed to help Mercer students deal with pandemic stress
Nov. 29—PRINCETON — Pairs of student volunteers visited each classroom and delivered a message to classmates who might be dealing with stress at home and at school while a pandemic complicates life even more, a message that told them how their lives matter.
PikeView Middle School is piloting a new program called Train Your Brain — Help Hope Live. Co-Founders of You Matter I Matter. Michelle Toman and Barri Faucett developed the curricula, which is a monthly mental health wellness and awareness program and initiative, according to Assistant Principal Rebecca Curry.
Part of the programming includes a select group of students and staff being trained as Champion ChangeMakers to carry out the programming designed to reach every student and staff member in a school setting. The curriculum includes a whole person approach of acknowledging oneself as well as others, while also addressing and helping meet the social and emotional needs of youth.
"What they're doing today is rolling out a school-wide Trusted Adult and You Matter campaign," Toman said, a National Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Awareness advocate. "So the program itself is called Train Your Brain, Help Hope Live. It's a mental health and wellness awareness initiative for youth. This is a peer led, a student led program. What we do is we go in and train youth to be able to carry out the program. So the first thing we did is we came and we spent four hours with 30 youth that were chosen."
Each student was selected for their ability to reach out to their peers.
"They chose kids who had influence among their peer groups, and then we made sure that no peer group is left untouched," Toman stated. "Part of the brain science behind the program is that those kids make a little 'framily.' And we use the word 'framily" because family doesn't always mean something good for everyone. Framily is the words friends and family shoved together. We use the word framily because not all of us have a good family. Not all of us come from good homes. Family doesn't always mean something good for youth; that can be a very emotion-provoking word if you don't have a good family. Maybe you're a kid who doesn't have a good family or you're a kid like me, who was an orphan and you don't have any family left. I was an orphan myself, yes, by the age of 7."
"And in another aspect of the framily word, not everybody feels they have a friend, and maybe family is the only thing they have; so we shove those two words together," Toman said. "It's something that we use across the nation, that we're framily. So that kind of fits everybody and feels good for everyone."
Adolescent and teen years can be difficult, the middle school years are very formative years when the human brain is still growing; researchers say that the prefrontal cortex of teens still has a lot of work to do to grow into adulthood, Curry said.
The frontal brains of the school's students are still developing, and won't be completed until they are 25 or 26 years old, Toman said.
"So how can we expect them to be rational and responsible all of the time when even we, as adults, are not? " she added.
Understanding the development of the brain regarding decision making, ambition, coping, connectedness, etc., is part of the Help HOPE Live (Train Your Brain) programming. It also addresses the toll the pandemic has taken on everyone collectively in addition to how COVID-19 elevated the conversation surrounding mental health, ultimately reminding us all of the need to take care of ourselves — not only physically, but mentally, Curry said. The program initiatives are multifaceted but in short it is an upstream prevention model empowering students themselves to be the ChangeMakers to carry out the guided peer-led program.
Trained staff members help guide the trained students, but this program empowers youth to carry out the mission and create that sense of connectedness in being a part of something greater. The trained students visited every classroom on Nov. 23, sharing the message with their peers that their life matters. Every student in the school will receive a message with the reminder that there is always help and hope available as well as resources for safety or help regarding suicide. Part of the first initiative also includes a Trusted Adult campaign.
Another group of students came up with and developed a visual, a tree, for the schools Grand Hallway that will include all students being able to participate by allowing them to name trusted adults in the school and greater community they could go to when they may be in need of help, Curry said.
Right now, the students are having a lot of fun with a mental health initiative that they get to have a significant voice in; this not only helps them help themselves, but also their peers and families. It also teaches them that though they're strong on their own, they are not alone and that we are stronger together. The monthly units will be carried out for the remainder of the school year, the program is very intentional and was designed following the CASEL model. It is amazing to see how game play combined with brain health lessons behind the reasoning truly clique with these adolescents in their brains, Curry said.
"Their excitement for this program at PVMS is beyond what we ever expected, they have great ideas and these kids are looking forward to using some of the programming outside of the school in the greater community to reach even more individuals," co-founders and owner programming owners Toman and Faucett said. "The positive ripple effect of something like that, can never fully be measured."
During each classroom visit, the students wrote down the name of a trusted adult or adults. They were also given cards outlining the You Matter I Matter pledge. This pledge includes:
You can do hard things. You've survived 100 percent of your toughest days.
This is a reminder — you matter... and your life matters.
— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com
Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com
