Awareness Week

By: Stella Bock

Awareness week is coming up and I wanted to bring ”Awareness” to it. The reason for this week is to inform students on subjects that need to be brought up. Awareness week is this February 7th - 11th, and StuCo has a lot in store.

This year's Awareness Week is something special and here is the schedule:

2/7-Mon- Bullying Awareness- Navy Blue

2/8-Tues- Mental Health Awareness- Green

2/9-Wed- Addiction Awareness- Red

2/10-Thur- Special Needs Awareness- Yellow

2/11-Fri- Environmental Awareness- Light Blue

There are so many important subjects to touch on, but these are the subjects StuCo wanted to address this year.

Bullying

According to www.stopbullying.gov,“Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves physical or psychological abuse.” When this happens multiple times both the kid being bullied and the bully may end up long lasting psychological problems.

Bullying happens to kids everywhere all over the world. It is a very serious issue that schools have been bringing attention to. “In the US, 1 in 5 students ages 12-18 has been bullied during the school year and approximately 160,000 teens have skipped school because of bullying.”(www.dosomething.org)

Poston Butte’s Student Council is bringing bullying to light and making Poston Butte a welcoming environment. On Monday you can expect to see positive affirmations all around the school. StuCo is promoting positivity and ridding the negativity. Make sure you chip in too! You can chip in by complimenting a stranger or helping someone out. Help spread positivity!

If you are experiencing Bullying Call 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) · Chat with Lifeline(number on your ID card) · Visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Mental Health

Mental health is our emotional, psychological well being. Our mental health affects what we do in our everyday lives. It determines the actions, amount of stress and hard choices we make/take in. “Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood.”- Stated by www.mentalhealth.gov.

“Experiencing one or more of the following feelings or behaviors can be an early warning sign of a (mental health) problem: eating or sleeping too much or too little, pulling away from people and usual activities, and/or having low or no energy.” (www.mentalhealth.gov)

Poston Butte Student Council is addressing this much needed issue. Students suffer from bad Mental Health all over the world, and even in our school. FUSD is trying to address it with SEL (Social Emotional Learning), but it needs to be addressed more. The Student Council will issue a video to watch during homeroom on this day. The video addresses the fact that your mental health is very important, and you should always keep it in mind. You can also help yourself out by researching more about mental health to figure out what you need to better your mental health. Do it to grow yourself!

Addiction

“Addiction is a complex condition, a brain disease that is manifested by compulsive substance use despite harmful consequences.” explains www.psychiatry.org .

“Over half of all American families can trace some history of alcohol abuse. The 2015 NSDUH (National Survey on Drug Use and Health) reported over 86% of all adults having consumed alcohol at some point with 56% of these drinking during the month leading up to the survey.”(www.vitanovarehab.com) There are unfortunately many addictive substances. Some like Nicotine are the most dangerous. Nicotine can be found in vapes especially. Nicotine can affect a young person's memory, concentration, learning, self control, and mood.

Addiction is a dangerous thing, especially with vapes. Poston Butte’s StuCo is making this a big focuus. On Wednesday, if your teacher signed up, your class will go into the library during 1st, 2nd or 3rd period, and our wonderful on Campus security will talk about the dangers of addiction. You can help yourself and others by staying away from addictive materials and checking in on your friends.

If you are suffering from addiction please call SAMHSA National Helpline for confidential, free help from public health agencies to find substance use treatment and information: 1-800-662-4357

Special Needs Awareness

“Special needs is the unique or uncommon concerns created by a person’s medical, mental, developmental, physical condition or disability.” (www.protectedtomorrows.com )

People with special needs sometimes need aid in the following areas: thinking, communication, movement, social skills, life skills, and taking care of themselves.

There are 4 Main categories:

Developmental disability -

• These are disabilities that affect daily function in areas like moving, learning, self-care, and communication. Examples of developmental disabilities are: Autism, Down syndrome, etc.

Cognitive or neurological disorders-

• Cognitive disorders are disorders that affect your memory and problem-solving skills.

Examples of cognitive disorders are: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, etc.

Physical disabilities-

• Physical disabilities rely on devices such as wheelchairs, crutches, hearing aids or artificial limbs. Some examples of physical disabilities are: blindness, deafness, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, etc.

Mental illness-

• Mental illness affects the brain, it influences the way a person thinks, feels, behaves and/or relates to others. Some examples of Mental Illnesses are: Bipolar disorder, PTSD, Schizophrenia, drug addiction, etc.

(Credit: www.protectedtomorrows.com)

Poston Butte’s Student Council is bringing awareness to our Special Needs students. You can help out by researching about special needs yourself and being more aware of the words we use.

Environmental

“Environmentalism is an ideology that evokes the necessity and responsibility of humans to respect, protect, and preserve the natural world from its anthropogenic (caused by humans) afflictions.” (www.pachamama.org)

As we’ve known marine animals have been endangered for years, centuries but it has never been this bad. Plastic in our ocean is killing our animals and ocean. For example every year people “throw away 25 trillion Styrofoam cups; styrofoam unfortunately is not biodegradable (does not break down).” This is barely a quarter of what is destroying our earth. (www.kpwb.org)

The Student Council is Planting a plant for Environmental Day; Around 27,000 trees are cut down each day so why not give back. You can help out by spreading awareness and helping out our environment by using less paper, plastic, non reusable bags, or styrofoam. We have to save the world we live in and anyone can help, especially you.

These are this year's awareness subjects. I can’t wait to see all of you participate for each day.

Encanto Review (Spoiler Free):

By: Stella Bock

Disney’s Encanto is a beautifully complex and simple movie. The movie is about family, childhood, inner child archetypes, and the future of the family. Encanto is well thought out, and one of my new favorite Disney movies. The songs are fantastic.

The movie starts out with an introduction song where you get to meet the whole Madrigal family. The Madrigal’s are an extraordinary, unordinary family, where each family member besides Abuela (Played by María Cecilia Botero) and Mirabel (Played by Stephanie Beatriz), have magical powers. While the family is going through their personal struggles, the Casita (Madrigal’s magical house) is slowly falling apart. The only hope to save the family’s magic is Mirabel.

The story really connects us to the Madrigal familia. From the songs/music to the beautiful complex characters. The songs are by Lin-Manuel Miranda who has created Hamilton and In the Heights, along with the songs for both Moana and Vivo. The songs are deep and so very catchy. His songs “We don’t talk about Bruno”, “Surface Pressure” and “Waiting on a Miracle” are just a few of these many songs that will get stuck in your head. With these deep songs comes the deep characters. The characters are well thought out and even have hints of the 7 Inner Childhood Archetypes. The Madrigal family has struggles that everyone can relate to which makes this movie filled with so many more heartfelt emotions. For example, Luisa Madrigal (Played by Jessica Darrow) is struggling to be the oldest; to carry the pressure of the family while Isabella Madrigal (Played by Diane Guerrero) is struggling to be the perfect, beautiful daughter of the family. All of the characters go through their own paths with bumps and hills to climb and the best part of the entire movie in my opinion was the fact that there was no villain, just regular people who make mistakes. Just like in real life.

This was one of the best 2021 Disney movies that came out. I would highly recommend Encanto. It’s like I’ve said before a great movie with great characters and a bomb soundtrack. Full of bittersweet, warm, loving moments. I hope when you watch it you have as much fun as I did.