Learning to Slow Down

This week was Upper School Mental Health Week. “It is really a time when we as a community turn to the topic of mental health and care about how we are doing, individually and collectively,” says Susan Essex, Director of Student Support Services.

Mental Health Week is a real team effort with coordination between the Office of Student Support, the Forefront Club, the Forefront Taskforce, the Happiness Project Club, and parent volunteers. Each day had different activities that encouraged students to think about what prioritizing their mental health looks like. Many days involved an art project that allowed students to embrace their creative side through alcohol paints, coloring, or rock painting. On Wednesday, students were asked to support each other by writing encouraging notes on post-its and ‘tagging’ each other. Students also wore yellow to stand for Suicide Awareness and made small flower arrangements with yellow flowers simply to bring a moment of joy into their lives. They also passed out cookies with encouraging notes written on the plates.

“Our activities are not meant to heal mental health issues, but rather to bring a caring lift to people’s day at school. A place to belong that feels supportive is a great protective factor for mental health,” says Essex.

On Friday, students spent time engaging in their choice of self-regulation activities. Some students took a nature walk around campus while others expressed their creativity through art. And still other students practiced the skill of letting past failures go. They wrote their challenges on flash paper and then set fire to the paper to symbolize letting their struggles go. Flash paper is often used by magicians and leaves no residue. As Essex lead the students through the exercise she pointed out that there was nothing left in the cauldron after setting fire to the things they wrote, showing that there was nothing left for them to carry going forward.

Every year the activities vary during mental health week with new activities being suggested. This year, the Happiness Project Club came up with the idea to place mental health relief kits in the bathrooms throughout campus to give student’s resources to help steady their mind if they were feeling overwhelmed. One fan favorite event that returned this year was the therapy dogs, courtesy of Reading with Rover. Four dogs came to campus during MS and US lunch and students got to stop by and spend a few minutes petting the dogs and decompressing from their days. Essex noted, “I’m not sure who loves the therapy dogs more, the students or the adults!”

Click this link to see some photos of the great activities students did this week.