Mental Health

The mental health project has begun at Milton High School with staff seminars that educate the staff on specific mental health topics including gender and sexuality, self-care, stress budgeting, and trauma awareness. The goal of this project is to enlighten teachers and staff on such topics to highlight the discrepancies in the education system and in personal teaching styles. The Aasha Foundation partnered with CHRIS180, a non-profit organization focused on mental health outreach in North Atlanta area. Together, we mapped a series of seminars to address prominent mental health concerns. Each seminar is designed to elaborate on mental health challenges among students and staff to empower and spark conversation about these issues between staff and students. The Aasha Foundation not only focuses on the students' mental health, but also on the well-being of the staff to ensure a well-rounded education and understanding of specific challenges that niche groups and general groups in society face. 

 

The first two seminars occurred in February 2022: gender and sexuality as well as trauma awareness. The first seminar, gender and sexuality, provided the staff with an in-depth understanding of what gender and sexuality mean as well as specific terms to know like non-binary, gender fluid, and asexual.

 

The trauma awareness session explored what trauma truly means on an ambiguous scale as well as addressed specific traumas like drug abuse, sexual abuse, mental and emotional abuse, and death. Each topic was discussed in detail with methods on how to identify and approach a student who may be struggling to express their trauma in a healthy way. 

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Mrs. Rebecca Deweese, an AP educator at Milton High School, claimed, "I am so glad to have had the opportunity to attend the Seminar so that I can better serve and support my students; my goal as an educator goes beyond the English content covered in AP English courses, as it is most important, in my opinion, to create and foster a classroom environment that is inclusive and safe for students to grow academically, emotionally, and personally.  I learned so much from the seminar, including small changes in addressing students and why the constant adaptation of our inclusivity practices is essential in our line of work as educators.  I was impacted by the deep discussions relating to our perceptions of identity and how culturally and generationally, those perceptions differ; I know that had I not attended, I would not feel as empowered to support my LGBTQ+ students, nor would I feel as encouraged to consider best practices to meet their needs as directly and indirectly as I can.  This seminar was invaluable to me as an educator, as a parent, and as a citizen of the world at large; I think, more than anything, that seminars like this highlight the need for education and stress the importance of empathy and awareness as essential in taking steps to making our world (and our school communities) a better place for all students."

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In April 2022, we held our next session: self-care. Through conversations with peers and educators, we found that teachers struggle to support their students if their own mental health isn't preserved. This seminar was created to help educators develop skills in self-care and resilience as they come out of the pandemic and face traumas seen in society. After discussions with educators, we discovered that teachers' mental healths is directly correlated to their students' mental healths. The Aasha Foundation hopes to create a holistic education of mental health that includes awareness for minorities and trauma survivors while also focusing on self-preservation.