From the students (officers): Aliyah Chapman, Liz Kowlski, Rylee McTernan, Morin Yacoub, and Maren Bowmen
This blog was written by student leaders at Whitman-Hanson Regional High School about their experiences advancing mental health in their community. This is the first of two pieces sharing the story of these students’ advocacy. To read about this journey/story from the perspective of Whitman-Hanson Regional High School Active Minds advisors and staff, click here.
After losing our friend Ava to suicide, we didn’t know what to do. We lost her at the end of the 2023 school year and it was a hard summer trying to make sense of everything. We thought about the “new normal” we would face as we navigated the next school year without her. We were out at dinner with friends one night, and we talked about forming a new group at our school, focused on kindness and mental health to prevent anyone from feeling the way our friend Ava must have felt.
We put our ideas together and brought them to the school. After finding an advisor, we brainstormed ways to make our ideas a reality. Our chapter was started with support from KyleCares, The Kyle Johnson Foundation, who provides grants to schools in New England to start Active Minds chapters. Our advisor wrote a grant to the KyleCares foundation and before we knew it we had an Active Minds chapter at Whitman-Hanson. We held meetings to come up with ideas for fighting the stigma of mental health and making sure that everyone on campus has access to the support they need, knows how to find it, and never feels alone.
From here, we focused on ways to continue to boost morale and prioritize the mental health of the school. Some of the ideas we transformed into reality were:
2023-2024 Events/Activities
The year kicked off with a successful Active Minds Sweatshirt fundraiser. The demand was so high that we had to do a second round. After presenting at the school committee meetings, each member also requested a sweatshirt to support our chapter.
- “We organized a sweatshirt fundraiser with the theme “you are not alone” to raise funds for mental health awareness. We also used part of the proceeds to fund other school-wide efforts like our Green Banada Project”
We planned with our student advisors, administration and the Athletic Director to implement the Green Bandana Project, which allowed us to provide every student and staff member with a green bandana to wear during pep rally. This would help us bring everyone together in support of mental health. Each grade is represented by a different color during pep rally (red, black and white) so the green would symbolize that even when we are separate, we are together. Along with the bandanas, we did a mental health fundraiser in which our principal offered students the opportunity to shave his beard in support of mental health. We raised $1400 dollars to support mental health!
- “[We] purchase green bandanas for everyone in the school to wear at a pep rally. During our pep rallies, each grade at our school is represented by a color (white, red, black). By having everyone wear the green bandana, it symbolized unity even when we are separate. The sea of green on the students and our teachers was an AMAZING sight.”
We created a series of PSA videos that would be shown on our daily news, during morning announcements, at sporting events, during pep rallies and to our school committee. These videos consisted of messages from club advisors & captains, a PSA focusing on A.S.K, and mini multilingual positive mental health messages played during various spirit weeks.
- “We also presented our first public service announcement video at the [pep] rally, and then everyone wanted to get involved with the next PSA videos we created.”
Mental Health Awareness Week Events: We would join our principal for his weekly “Welcome Sign Wednesday” and great students as they walk into school, with positive “signs” and we would hand out “pocket hugs.”
“Family” Dinners.” We would get together outside of school, have dinner and talk through a topic, for us it was specifically on grief as we had just lost our friend Ava and we were all still working through it
We collaborated with student counsel and had a table at their annual Halloween Hoopla, we taught the kids how to make Halloween Stress balls and had fun with them!
We attended the KyleCares conference and one of our PSA videos was featured at the conference. We gained a lot of great insight and ideas and we were also able to share our accomplishments with other schools.
- “After attending the KyleCares conference, and watching the Active Minds keynote Speaker Frank Warren, creator of PostSecret, we created our own version of Post a Secret — it was a space to be vulnerable and share our true feelings. It made us feel exposed, nervous, and overwhelmed, but through the activity we also felt less alone and better connected to each other. We did this as a way to show how stressful the school year has been, what we are actually going through and why mental health is so important. This was a big way that we could advocate for ourselves.”
We sat down with our Active Minds club members to brainstorm what event we could do that will help our schools mental health. We wanted to come up with a fun way for people to learn ways to help with their mental healthSomething that would always come up was the need for mental health days; while we are told to take care of ourselves and prioritize our mental health, students are always too afraid to actually do so. Therefore we came up with a Mental Health Field Day!
We wanted to connect with other students and staff; after a really rough year, we all needed a break; no phones, we wanted to “disconnect to connect.” In order to show why this is necessary, we made sure to do a lot of work along the way to not only promote mental health, but bring the awareness and understanding that it is impacting everyone around us all the time.
With the help of our Active Minds advisor, we connected with our principal to get approval and successfully set a date. We met with the principal and superintendent, and after presenting to the school committee twice, we were able to organize a Mental Health Field Day. Not only that, but our superintendent felt that this should not just be for the High School, it should be a district wide event. Students should get to have this experience every year starting from the bottom.
Our school’s field day was held at the end of the school year across the entire campus, including the football field. This was a good way to give the students and staff a chance to have a break after a long school year. There were so many different activities centered on skills to help people with their mental health. Both students and staff had a chance to learn what helps their mental health when they are feeling stressed or down.
This was an opportunity for our school community to come together, meet new people, explore shared interests, and unwind from the school year. We noticed so many students had a smile on their face. The field day was so much fun. So many students had a chance to find ways to help their mental health, and most importantly everyone made memories and had an amazing time!
It was lit.
It was moving.
It was relieving.
It was exactly what everyone needed.
We plan on continuing our amazing Mental Health Field Day annually, and have also been able to extend the number of tardies without penalty from three to four because we understand that some days we need a little extra time to prepare for the day. Mental health really does matter.
