Psyched About School

It’s May—the sun is shining, flowers are popping, the pollen is thick, and school is winding down. May also means it’s Mental Health Awareness Month. The cynical side of me thinks, “well geez, do we need a special day or week or month for everything?” I mean September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. There’s National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day on January 31st. February is National Pet Dental Health Month. Enough already.  But then the other part of me thinks, Mental Health Awareness Month is in a whole different category than a “shiver me timbers” or a K-9 molar extraction, it’s serious business. We need it to be every month! Mental health has often been overshadowed by its physical health big-brother. Eat your vegetables. Walk 10,000 steps. Wait did you eat your vegetables? Take some more steps. Lift some weights. Do you see those people on Instagram? Yeah, do your best to look like them. More vegetables! If you do all this, will you be healthy? You might be. Or you...

As we wrap up Mental Health Awareness Month, several members of our WS/FCS family will share their thoughts about the importance of mental health.  Although the month is almost over, it is critical that we continue to #breakthestigma by increasing our awareness and understanding of this topic. Our student voice is Lillian Reid, a senior at West Forsyth High School. She has great insight and advice on how to support those with mental health challenges. A Student Perspective By Lillian Reid Although mental illness has an unfortunate stigma attached to it, many people today have been diagnosed with one form or another. What some people don’t recognize is that mental illness is much more common than you might think. In fact, younger Americans diagnosed with mental disorders have increased significantly over the past decade, according to sciencedaily.com. Specifically, depression increased from 2005 to 2017 at 52% in adolescents, although anxiety is often associated with depression, so...

In 1970, the Autism Society first designated April as Autism Awareness month to promote awareness about individuals on the spectrum. This year is significant because as of March 4, 2021, the Autism Society made the shift from Autism Awareness to Autism Acceptance. The hope is that this change will empower autistic individuals and their families. To promote both awareness and acceptance, this year’s campaign is “Celebrate Differences.” There are so many wonderful things to celebrate about individuals on the spectrum. One of the best things is that no two people on the spectrum are the same; each one is unique in their own special way.  Although April is over, we want to continue this acceptance campaign and find out how WSFCS celebrates differences throughout the year. To that end, we surveyed a few of our staff and families to find out and here are some of the responses we got:  Accepting people for who they are and not projecting my expectations or perceptions on them. - Scho...

  By Guest Blogger, Deci Yahya, SBS Teacher at Bolton Elementary When I started my first year teaching last year in the SBS classroom, I knew that I wanted to incorporate plenty of social emotional learning into my curriculum. I wanted my students to feel like our class was a safe space where we were a family. At the beginning of the year, we began using the Calm App in our classroom. It provided soft background music and a variety of calming backdrops for our board that we left on while we worked during the day. As I began exploring the app, I found that it had yoga instruction for specific age groups, including school aged children. Most of my students were not familiar with Yoga or Meditation and I wasn’t sure how they would respond. We tried it out in our seats a couple of times and the students showed a lot of interest so I invested in some yoga mats for the class with some money that was donated to our school. Pretty soon the students were requesting Yoga and meditation as pa...

  May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a month designated to bring awareness to mental health and promote healthy social-emotional development.  Mental health is essential to everyone’s overall health and well-being, and mental illnesses are common and treatable. Throughout the month, we encourage you to help spread awareness on this important topic. You can do this by participating in our social media campaign by showing us how you practice self-care! Take a #selfcareselfieWSFCS and post it to your Instagram, Facebook, and/or Twitter accounts. We also encourage you to get your green on daily to show your support.   Schoolpsyched has invited guest bloggers from the WSFCS to share important information on this topic throughout the month. We will hear the perspective of a teacher, a student, a parent, and a specialized support staff member. We have much to learn from each other on this important topic, so we are looking forward to hearing their stories.