Through its local chapter of the national program Sources of Strength, New Albany Middle and High schools are creating an open and inviting atmosphere to help students draw strength from mental health, rather than view it as a weakness.
This goal aligns with the Surgeon General’s Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health, which urges children and adults to recognize that mental health is essential to overall health.
“Kids think mental health is just being depressed, and they don’t understand that they can draw strength from mental health,” says Michele Oldenquist, a seventh-grade English teacher and Sources of Strength adviser.
Students in action
The program kicked off in 2018 before being put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, the program was reinstated, welcoming 50 mentors at the middle school and 41 at the high school.
These mentors, also known as ambassadors, are handpicked by teachers and are involved with everything from music and the arts to sports teams and JROTC. Once a month, the mentors get together and meet with their adviser to do team-building exercises, speak in classrooms and work on campaigns, or programming, for future classroom visits.
“The wheel is a tool that everyone can use,” says Nicole Aniano, an 8th grader who became a mentor last year. “If you feel like one part of your wheel isn’t as strong – like family, for example, or friends – you could always lean toward a mentor or a healthy activity.”
Feeling the impact
Jess Miller, an eighth-grade English teacher and Sources of Strength adviser, says campaigns are a way to share a particular part of the wheel with the entire student body. Past campaigns have included a food and book drive focused on generosity.
“When they come together for club, we talk about what campaign can be done to spread this particular part of the wheel throughout the building,” Miller says.
Being able to identify trusted adults and friends is a major focus of campaigns each year and something Aniano says it is important for students to understand.
“I know some of my friends either just don’t talk about it because it’s an uncomfortable conversation to have, especially with your friends,” she says. “Like, ‘Are they trusted friends?’ You don’t necessarily know, and that’s a hard thing to identify.”
Oldenquist echoes this concern, and emphasizes the program’s role in training mentors to recognize isolated students.
“Our dream is to get everybody to understand that they can draw strength from multiple different parts of our lives,” she says. “Our goal this year is to make sure that they know that they can turn to other parts of themselves.”
New Albany High School freshman Max White realized the importance of good mental health when he came to understand its connection to overall health, he says.
“I think that the idea that it’s all connected was kind of hard to get over,” White says. “But once I started really focusing and being like, ‘All right, this is real and I can relate with this stuff,’ I think it was after that when I started to realize the value of mental health.”
Rather than talking about sadness or depression, Miller says, the point of the group is to learn how to channel healthy habits to get ahead of deeper issues before they arise. Although the mentors are trained to point struggling students toward the right source for help, they are not viewed as therapists.
White is proof that specific goal is being met, he says.
“Sources of Strength definitely taught me to look at everything more positively and know I’ve got strategies (to help),” he says. “I have ways that I can get through stuff.”
More than anything, the most influential feature of the group is the sense of community it fosters, says White. By connecting all NAPLS students, Sources of Strength shows what can happen when a community comes together to build one another up in times of need.
“The whole program really helps everybody,” White says. “Not just the kids who we’re helping, but us, too.”
Kate Shields is an editorial assistant at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
