Mental Health & Wellness
With traditional operations disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, school counselors, along with other members of the district’s mental health and wellness team, created virtual offices and regular office hours for students to check in as necessary for support.
The Westerville City School District placed an emphasis on student well-being in response to the stressors of living and learning during a global pandemic. Our Office of Mental Health & Wellness developed a variety of resources to support children, such as an online library of videos and materials to help students manage stress, organize school work, and keep track of day-to-day activities. The district also offered its first-ever “Summer Ignite” program for students in grades 1 through 12. These free, non-credit enrichment classes kept children engaged in fun learning activities over the summer while providing them with skills and instructional opportunities that the students themselves helped identify. Summer Ignite sessions covered topics such as learning automotive maintenance; creating engaging social media content; launching a podcast; exploring fossils; reading diverse literature; participating in performing arts productions; learning personal wellness and self-care; and problem-solving through Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math (STEM). Summer Ignite also featured social-emotional support for students as elementary students connected with their teachers each morning as part of a wellness check before starting their lessons, and school counselors were readily accessible to middle and high school students.
Learning in the Westerville City Schools extends beyond the students we serve. The district also provides numerous opportunities for employees to emhance their professional skills and for our families to learn more about ways to support and parent their children.
The district launched a professional development series to provide all staff with the skills needed to make all schools trauma-informed and resilience-focused spaces. The goal of Trauma-Informed training is to create a mindset involving regular practices that support students’ well-being in a setting of safety, connectedness, empowerment, and healing.
The district launched its “Parent Prep” workshop series for parents of children in all grade levels (K-12) and continued providing the annual program in a virtual format during COVID. This full day of valuable information includes session topics such as mental health, wellness, school safety, technology, college and career readiness, study skills, organizational skills, and family resources. After two years of a virtual format, Parent Prep returned to providing in-person workshops this year.
Hope Squad
All district high schools now operate a peer-led initiative focused on mental health, as well as suicide prevention and education, known as “Hope Squad.”
Across the nation, 64.1% of youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment and 1 in 5 young adults live with a mental condition. The Hope Squad initiative trains and equips students with the knowledge and awareness necessary to recognize mental health/suicide warning signs, as well as the procedures to properly report those concerns in a timely manner. Each Hope Squad has staff advisors and as many as 50 student leaders who are nominated by their peers for this important role. Student leaders do not act as counselors, but rather they are trained with the skills needed to refer student peers to a trusted adult for help. As a result, every high school has increased access and availability to appropriate prevention services to children who are at risk for suicide. To support each high school’s Hope Squad, the district also launched “Question, Persuade Refer” (QPR) mental health and suicide education/training to all high school staff. Training has since been extended to community members interested in learning the skills needed to help prevent suicides and learn more about mental health using the QPR technique.