Individuals all across the world have spent nearly two years overcoming the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, a disease that shut down schools and businesses. With the rise of COVID, students have experienced a drastic increase in mental health issues and disorders. Schools play a very important role in conserving the health and safety of students, especially mental health. As such, even if conversations about mental health have always been a touchy topic, the school board is making strides to help students find their way through mental challenges.
As we all may know, Seminole County Public Schools (SCPS) introduced mental health awareness lessons on a website called Nearpod, where teachers would take one class period to go through a series of slides and presentations, actively having conversations and answering questions on mental health.
Although, in recent months, SCPS has employed a new method. Similar to the years prior, students continue to take one period of their day occasionally throughout the school year to go through these lessons. However, SCPS no longer uses Nearpod. Instead, we find ourselves sitting in class watching one video that doesn’t exceed a length of six to seven minutes. It is quite the difference to what the students have become used to, and, across the Seminole High School campus, has come to be considered a more than questionable change to their method.
“I used to say that the Nearpods sucked because they were just really impersonal,” says an anonymous junior, “and I hate to say it now, but what the school board has started doing this year is even worse. Last year, teachers were actually having full conversations about mental health, and students were involved by answering the polls and questions that were on the presentation. Now, everyone just sits there and zones out while the video plays for only five minutes. The supposed ‘conversation’ they tell us to have for twenty minutes at the end lasts for a quarter of that time. It’s made things so much more impersonal.”
While many students agree with her sentiment and believe the awareness lessons don’t actually make students want to reach out to those who may be able to help with their issues, there are also students who see the lessons for what they are: a school board’s attempts to help.
“I think that the mental health lessons are very important because they teach you what to do when you or someone you know is in a particularly unfortunate situation,” says SHS sophomore Savannah Heilman. “I did like the Nearpods more because the videos are long and unenthusiastic, but the lessons help in their own way. I mean, it keeps us all informed, lets us know how we can help ourselves or others. I’m glad we have them.”
Students also believe that the school board could do more in terms of mental health awareness. “I think they’re scared to talk to counselors and other official people because it’s intimidating,” admits Heilman. “We only ever really speak to our counselors for school stuff like credits and classes, and the officers obviously have that official air about them.”
SCPS has made clear endeavors to turn around their students’ mental health for the better, but there is more effort that could be put into it. “Make us feel more comfortable,” advises the anonymous junior. “That’s the first step in the right direction.”
Mental health continues to be an issue all around the world, especially among students and teenagers. Even so, we cannot say that the school board is not trying to help, because that simply would not be true. Their efforts have been clearly defined, and while there are some things that could obviously have been more established, we recognize their attempts to help the students that struggle.