Transcript: Session 1B: Making Waves: Transforming School Culture through Student Mental Health Clubs

Kenwyn Derby:

So again, this is session One-B. It’s called Making Waves, Transforming School Culture through Student Mental Health Clubs, and it relates to our overall theme of the day, Transforming School Climate Mindsets and Ecosystems.

And if you were able to join at the keynote, our keynote speaker, Dr. Porscha, Dr. Lee Porscha Moore from Flourish Agenda, made a lot of points that highlights the importance of bringing our students together in community, of addressing our students’ mental health and empowering them.

She talked about healing-centered engagement in our schools, and moving from a trauma-informed lens to a healing-centered way of looking at things, which really looks at our assets. And she advocated for humane investments and building meaningful relationships. And she really highlighted that belonging and connection are so key to having a healing school climate.

And I think we all know, as humans, that belonging and connection is important for all of us, but particularly for our young people. And as we move forward in this challenging environment, how can we empower our students to heal themselves, and heal each other, but also create the systems that empower them to do so?

So I am super, super honored to welcome our speakers. They all come from Stanislaus County, and I’m going to give a little bit of their bios and then I’m going to hand it over to Jennifer Baker.

So Jennifer’s a licensed marriage and family therapist, and she’s a trainer with over 30 years of experience specializing in family systems, early childhood mental health, suicide prevention, and trauma-informed practices.

She’s dedicated to supporting student and educator mental health and wellness, and applying trauma-informed approaches to education, operating through a framework in which public health, mental health, and education intersect. As a multi-tiered systems of support coordinator at the Stanislaus County Office of Ed, she supervises the Project Cal-Well AWARE Grant and Student Behavioral Health Incentive Program.

And then we have Kym Barber. She’s worked in public education for over 25 years, having spent the last 11 with the Stanislaus County office, supporting homeless and foster youth education, school safety, PBIS, and programs across the MTSS framework.

In her current role as the youth programs coordinator, she’s developed a unique collaboration with NAMI on Campus clubs, which you will hear about this morning. She is passionate about helping students find their full potential, develop a sense of community, and celebrate their unique abilities.

And Brittney Clark is a library media clerk and the sole library staff at Orestimba High School in Newman, California, which is in Stanislaus County. She’s one of the advisors for our NAMI club, which they call NAMI Warriors. And the club works hard to provide safe spaces for students to talk about mental health, decrease its stigma, and do regular community outreach.

She’s also coordinating other efforts, including the NAMI Needs Shelf, providing hygiene items and clothing to students in the district. And she has many other things she coordinates, but I’ll jump to outside of her job. She’s the president of her local labor union, and also a full-time student working on her master’s degree in counseling and marriage and family child therapy.

So we have an amazing array of women here to speak with us today about their work. I’m going to hand it over to Jennifer, thank you so much.

Jennifer Baker:

Good morning. Kenwyn, thank you so much for that wonderful introduction, and hello to all who are with us today. Kym, Brittney, and I are excited for you to join us as we dive deep beneath the surface to explore the depths of student mental health clubs. Today we will share strategies, innovative programming, and lessons learned that have propelled these clubs to not only thrive, but flourish here in Stanislaus County.

First, let’s see how many of you know where Stanislaus is actually located in California? So like a Where’s Waldo, let’s do a where’s Stanislaus version? So in the chat, if you would type yes, if you know where Stanislaus is located. And for bonus points a yes-yes, if you’ve actually ever been here. And for those of you who don’t know, go ahead and type a no, if you don’t have any idea where we are.

I’ve got my others here, so I can see. Oh, hey, I’ve got some yes-yeses. All right. Okay, nice. Okay. Lot of yes, a couple nos, a couple nos. A yes and a no, haven’t been here. Awesome, it’s great to know that you know where we’re located. We are actually, so right there in the middle of the state, in the Central Valley of California. We like to say we have the best of both worlds, being located about an hour and a half from either the mountains or the ocean.

So to provide you with some insight into Stanislaus, our community boasts a population of slightly over 550,000, encompassing 30 cities. We’re made up of both urban and rural areas, and agriculture continues to reign as our leading industry. Currently here in Stanislaus the almond trees are in full bloom, showcasing their breathtaking blossoms. If you’re willing to take a drive, it’s an excellent opportunity for capturing some truly stunning photos.

Stanislaus County has 26 school districts, with just over 106,000 K through 12 students. Like many of you, I am also attending today’s conference in response to the concerning statistics outlined in this slide, regarding the youth mental health crisis in the United States. Youth here in Stanislaus County are facing the same challenges.

Throughout high school, I grappled with depression and thoughts of suicide. All I longed for was someone to ask me what was troubling me. Despite appearing visibly distressed, neither my friends nor the adults around me broached the subject. It wasn’t because they lacked concern, but rather because they didn’t recognize the signs, or know what to say. At that time, crucial resources such as the 988 Suicide Crisis lifeline, the Nova Science Campaign for Suicide Prevention, Youth Mental Health First Aid, virtual behavioral health apps like Soluna for vetted information and support, safe spaces training on adverse childhood experiences, and NAMI on Campus high school clubs were not available. I know for sure if there had been, they would’ve known what to say, and I wouldn’t have felt so alone.

The research that goes along with this data also supports the importance of early intervention and the pivotal role it plays in safeguarding mental health, emphasizing the importance of timely support and resources.

In my work, I often use the metaphor of life mirroring the ocean. Such waves have the power to crash upon us, disorienting our sense of direction. Yet within these waves lies the potential for transformation and the emergence of fresh opportunities. After years of being tossed about by the waves, many adults focus solely on what lies above the ocean surface, overlooking the rich ecosystem where our youth still dwell beneath the sea.

The image in this slide is inspired by Yuri Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, which positions the child at the center of concentric circles representing various systems that influence them. This includes family, friends, school, the community, and even the environment.

Early research focused a lot on how these systems affected the child. Later this concept was expanded as depicted by the two-way arrows, illustrating not only how the child is influenced by their surroundings, but also how the child in turn influences the world around them. While wisdom is commonly associated with elders, my experience has shown that sitting down with a group of youth provides an invaluable opportunity to uncover their profound wisdom.

And Generation Z exemplifies this, with the research showing that youth in this generation are social-change-minded, and would rather engage in community work that addresses the underlying cause of an issue than engage in short-term service to address the symptoms. More specifically, they’re most motivated by relationships, advocating for something they believe in and working toward achieving milestones for advancement. The beautiful faces in this picture are from Houston High School, when they made a make-one, give-one friendship bracelet during an event on their campus to promote suicide prevention last fall.

As you’ll hear from Kym and Brittney, these youth possess a remarkable potential to enact collective impact, harnessing their energy, innovation, and interconnectedness to drive positive change at their schools and in their communities. Their collaborative endeavors often emerge from a shared vision for a better future. They’re united by a sense of purpose to raise mental health awareness and reduce stigma on their campuses through the transformative power of collective action.

The picture in this slide includes 36 Stanislaus County students from five local high schools, plus eight advisors who this past year attended the NAMI O- Campus Youth Summit in Sacramento. For nearly five years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with the California Department of Education, where I serve as the Stanislaus County coordinator for the Project Cal-well AWARE Grant. AWARE is short for Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education, and is financed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as a part of the Now Is The Time initiative.

The inception of the AWARE Grant was a direct response to the tragic events at Sandy Hook, which resulted in the loss of students and the educators dedicated to their care. The Grant’s three component model is designed to advance mental health awareness, improve access to community and school-based mental health services for students and their families, and bolster the wellbeing of the educators who care for them.

As part of its first tier component goals, Stanislaus opted to support establishing the National Alliance on Mental Illness, NAMI, on campus high school clubs. Which, through their initiatives, enhanced school climate via school-wide preventions spearheaded by the clubs.

So we’re going to do a quick poll. We’re curious how familiar you are with the NAMI on Campus high school clubs. So you’re going to have choices of, you’ve never heard it before, you’re not too familiar, you’re very familiar, or we have one in our school or district.

Brianna Moorehead:

41% of those who answered have never heard of them. 33% are not too familiar. 22% are very familiar, and we actually have three participants that have one at their school or in their district.

Jennifer Baker:

That is awesome, wow. It’s so great to hear that there are some participants that have them in their school, and I think this is going to be a great time for you to learn more about it, for those 70% who haven’t.

I’m going to hand it over to Kym, who will share with you the transformative impact these clubs wield in nurturing supportive communities, and promoting mental wellbeing among their peers.

Kym Barber:

Thanks Jennifer, I appreciate it. So you’re beginning to see how the clubs have been introduced in Stanislaus County through the Cal-AWARE Grant. Jennifer, if you want to change that slide, thank you.

You can imagine, I was feeling pretty good about the way the schools were going. The clubs had been introduced into the county, and I was feeling pretty good about what the schools were accomplishing. But you can imagine the shock I felt when I heard, in my morning drive to work, when the news anchor reported the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, released a report calling attention to the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation and lack of connection in our country, actually calling it an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.

And we knew what epidemic means, right? Covid. It immediately brought me thoughts of covid. Disconnection fundamentally affects our mental, physical, and societal health. In fact, loneliness and isolation increase the risk for individuals to develop their own mental health challenges.

The report goes on and says that lacking connection can increase the risk factor for premature death to levels that are comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. When our students feel connected, when they experience belonging, they make better choices and they have better life experiences. Meaningful social connections contribute to overall happiness and life satisfaction.

We enjoy a sense of fulfillment when we share experiences, and create memories and create achievements. In his 2023 report, Dr. Murthy challenges us to make the same investments in addressing social connection that we have made in addressing tobacco use, obesity, and the addiction crisis.

These next slides demonstrate the 21-22 data we’ve collected from the mental health supports module of the CHKS. This slide refers to mental health stigma, and demonstrates the orange in California, blue in Stanislaus County statistics of students who agree that their school encourages them to take care of their mental health. At 72%, that’s encouraging.

And then on the bottom, students who agree that there’s open conversation about mental health on their campus, comparing again, California 51, Stanislaus County at 44%. This talking openly helps reduce stigma, which increases safe spaces and increases connectedness and belonging.

Let’s now look at some numbers together. These may be familiar to you. I know administrators are examining school connectedness, specifically for your district’s LCAP. Hopefully you’re seeing those statistics and sharing with you. To determine school connectedness, the CHK asks five questions to students to determine that combined score for school connectedness. They’re asking that I feel close to people at school, I feel happy to be at school, I feel like I’m part of the school, the teachers at this school treat students fairly, and I feel safe at my school. And we can see from the graph of various grade levels, the data is hovering around 48 to 54%.

But, and it’s not on this graph, we looked back at previous year’s school connectedness data and we saw that it was above 50% in all grade levels, with some reaching as high as 65%. So we saw from this graph that school connectedness is dropping in Stanislaus County, and we can make the interpretation that students are feeling less connected than ever before.

Then, looking at meaningful participation there on the far right side of the slide. We’re asking the questions; I do interesting activities, I help decide things like class rules. I do things that make a difference, I have a say in how things work. I help decide how activities or rules, I help decide those activities. Now, with it being so low at 20 to 22%, it begs us to ask the question, if we agree that connection is important to student success, and we see it dropping, and we see that students are not experiencing opportunities for meaningful participation, what are we going to do about it?

So we’ve learned from research that merely belonging to a club can have a positive effect on a student’s sense of identity, their social integration, and their overall wellbeing. One study examined the role of clubs among students from diverse backgrounds and found that participation was associated with a greater feeling of belonging and social integration, particularly among students from marginalized or disadvantaged backgrounds.

So when young people want to talk about health, stress, substance abuse, they will naturally turn to their peers. And if we as adults are aware of this, maybe we can find opportunities to facilitate those connections. Give students the opportunities to build community, and help young people develop not only more connections, but also more skills to support one another.

And at the Stanislaus County office of Ed, we’re actively working to help build those connections. In the spring of 2020, just a few months after the disruptions caused by covid, our district secured grant funding to explore an innovative blend of our effective tobacco prevention program we call FAST.

Our county’s FAST program is known for their collaboration and youth-led initiatives. The idea was to combine their model with NAMI’s statewide mental health clubs to create a robust plan for successfully establishing, growing, and sustaining these clubs.

The foundation of both the FAST clubs and the NAMI clubs in Stanislaus County is the resiliency research by Bonnie Bernard and Anne Austin. Specifically, these three critical protective factors.

Cultivating caring relationships; NAMI on Campus is a perfect place. They’d be prioritized, creating supportive and inclusive environments. Students feel valued, understood, and accepted.

We create high expectations; the clubs encourage members to strive for excellence in all aspects of their lives, promoting a culture of resilience and fostering a real sense of purpose and direction.

We offer opportunities for meaningful involvement; NAMI on Campus clubs engage students in activities that contribute to their personal and collective development. Through involvement in decision-making, leadership positions, community service projects, the club empowers students to make a positive impact in their school and community.

You might see the connection to these protective factors on the previous slides with the CHKS. That’s not an accident. CHKS combines those for that purpose, because those protective factors mitigate against the adverse effects of stress, trauma, and other risk factors that our students are all experiencing.

Now, let’s dive a little deeper into the NAMI on Campus High school clubs. Our clubs are student-led, with a specific aim to raise mental health awareness and reduce stigma on campus. Our student leaders work with their club members to create fun, educational activities to make connections, and they strive to make a difference on campus and in the community. NAMI on Campus clubs in Stanislaus County are effectively supporting student mental health that aligns with the values of NAMI as an organization. And because we are NAMI, our students find a passion for advocating for inclusive school policies that prioritize mental health and wellbeing.

Our clubs prioritize building a supportive and inclusive community where students feel valued and understood, and they play a vital role in promoting resilience, wellbeing, and student success. And as Jennifer explained so eloquently about Gen Z characteristics, our students need to know they have a connection to something bigger than themself. Our clubs provide a space for them to make an impact about a vital social subject.

Now in year four, we have 20 high school clubs that are funded through the grant. When we began this journey, we started with just five clubs. Our clubs were all initially established in a virtual space, and of course recruiting members for new club is never easy, and it was a special challenge during the pandemic. But because of creative recruitment efforts, we have now grown to 20 high school clubs, six active middle school clubs, and we have a Turlock graduate that moved to Stan State and started her own NAMI on Campus college club, and in just a few months already has 10 members. And we can now boast memberships of over 500 mental health champions in Stanislaus County clubs.

Now, in year four of our five-year experiment, significant lessons have been learned along the way. You can only imagine.

Our first key component, you know that receiving that innovation grant marked a pivotal moment, and was the catalyst for successfully implementing the clubs. If you are looking for a county level club coordination, I can’t underestimate the importance of having a gifted grant writer on your team. Our grant came with an amazing support team from our county behavioral health. They have been our partners from day one, and I could not have imagined doing it without them. They challenged us, encouraged us, and provided support.

One of the key lessons learned was the importance of district-wide coordination in establishing and sustaining the NAMI on Campus clubs. One of the strengths of our departments, and actually the whole county office of ed, is that we have an amazing relationship with our local school districts. And my previous work as a foster and homeless youth program worker, that relationship provided a real conduit for starting the conversation at the district level, and then it was just a matter of helping. They helped us to identify the schools where we needed to start the clubs.

Another essential component is the adoption of evidence-informed curriculum. This ensured the club activities and discussions were really grounded in research and best practices in mental health education. And I started with their resources from the Department of Education, and I found the agencies that they supported, and then I kept mining to finding more.

And I worked with my colleagues like Jennifer, and her experience and background, to make sure that the resources were from reputable sources. Then, to enhance the communication and engagement, monthly newsletters were introduced and they served as a platform to highlight resources, share activities, ideas, and promote upcoming events and trainings. And you can see that I really like a lot of puns. Additionally, monthly advisor meetings provided guidance and support, and gave us opportunities for the club advisors to network.

I believe though, that the mental health topics presented in the NAMI California curriculum is the most effective method to provide a comprehensive mental health education and awareness among the club members. This thematic approach facilitated discussions on various topics across the spectrum of mental health, beginning with suicide prevention in September, and ending with mental health awareness in May.

These monthly themes are essential in club activity planning, collaboration with NAMI in both the state and local levels, as well as partnerships with our local community agencies all further enhance the club’s impact. These collaborations are essential, and provide access to resources, training opportunities, and club support for activities and involvement.

But you can imagine, the journey was not without its challenges. Definitely starting this experiment in our then virtual world presented obstacles, and it took time and tough negotiation just to secure five new clubs in a virtual world. They weren’t even meeting at school, and here I was trying to get them to start a new club in a virtual platform. Clubs had to, just like so many other changes, adopt their recruiting activities and outreach efforts to an online format. Thankfully, we’ve been able to move past that now, and we’ve saved the best parts of what we’ve learned. We still struggle in Stanislaus County with mental health stigma. Stanislaus County is very conservative, and stigma will remain an ongoing challenge, highlighting the need for the NAMI message.

And furthermore, just finding adequate time for clubs to meet together provides challenge, amidst busy student schedules and their academic demands. But despite these challenges, the dedication and resilience of our club members and advisors, we have champions among them, and they can continue to take up the banner, overcome obstacles, and continue their work.

I mentioned the curriculum, and I want to highlight Stanislaus County NAMI Club website. It’s linked in the document that we provided in the group chat, and we’ve developed some centralized hub for our advisors and members to access information, to support all the activities of club life.

The website resources are organized to coincide with those mental health topics, and provide resources and activities to support the work of the clubs. I can tell you though, I have to continue to navigate through those changes in the languages. I’m challenged every day to examine the strategies, and consistently move to make the clubs more effective.

Next, I want to highlight one of our county-wide events, and share a very short video, just a small taste from our Breaking Barriers event held just a few weeks ago. Our participants were NAMI on Campus high school club members. The event was a co-mingling of mental health and artistic expression through a cultural lens. The keynote speakers were gifted in poetry and spoken word, and workshop presenters demonstrated creative outlets and coping skills. All revealing the power we have when we work together to educate and support one another.

So good. It was such a fun day. So when we talk about collective impact and healing-centered engagement, I’m really excited to share how the NAMI on Campus clubs are a perfect pipeline for activities like that one, to foster collaboration, empowerment and present a holistic approach to mental health and wellbeing in their campus community.

These are a few examples of how our clubs have engaged in activities and impact their campuses. They provide students the opportunity to work collectively to address mental health challenges among multiple stakeholders, including students, even parents and staff, community agencies, all creating, together, a meaningful change to improve mental health outcomes for everyone.

Additionally, these activities prioritize healing and wellbeing, provide support for creative self-expression, building supportive relationships, and learning important coping skills.

Just looking through them, looking at mental health awareness campaigns. Mental health awareness is coming up in the month of May. You can organize a whole week event, or you can organize just a day event of, just like Jennifer mentioned earlier, about making important 988 bracelets.

Look at trainings and workshops that can be offered to parents in mental health, and helping them understand what their students are going through, giving them that trauma-informed lens. I showed you the artistic expression through our last month, earlier this month’s event. It was amazing. Maybe you can host a mic night to share your own student’s written word or poetry.

And then in advocacy. Advocacy is so important to empower students. It’s a NAMI policy, it’s kind of the backbone of what NAMI does. And this can involve advocating for increased access to mental health services, improve campus support resources, and change in academic policy to reduce stress.

I’m so excited to have Brittney Clark, one of Orestimba High School’s NAMI on Campus club advisors here with us today. Brittney’s going to break down how this dynamic club leads a mission to raise mental health awareness across our campus, and in our whole community. You’ll hear from her how the club members have rallied together to build the biggest club in our county, and share the club commitment to fostering positive change and empowering student-led advocacy projects for a healthier, more inclusive school environment.

Brittney Clark:

Thank you, Kym. I think I’m lucky enough to have the funnest part of this presentation, because I get to brag about my kids.

So I am one of the advisors for an NAMI on Campus club out here at Orestimba. We are located in Newman, California, which if you remember, kind of the boot shape of Stan County, we’re on the very end. We’re a small town, we have more cows than people we like to say. If you eat almonds, they are from our orchards, possibly some of the orchards at Orestimba as well.

In our community, we are about 78, 79% Hispanic. We do have a big migrant population that comes through with our crops and our agriculture that we serve at our campuses. Orestimba has grown, but it’s not going to look the same picture as I’m sure what some of your high schools do. We have about 980 students, grade nine to 12. Most of those, probably about 84%, are Hispanic. Of that 84, there’s a decent 50%, I would say, where their home language is not English. And so we have a lot of really kind of diverse conversations on campus, and a lot of things that we have to overcome to understand each other on our campus.

We’re also fairly social, economically low. The majority of our campus qualifies for free or reduced lunch. They’re working parents, working two, three jobs to get their kids through. We have a high foster youth population, and we’re getting a high homeless population, unfortunately. So we’re a different kind of dynamic out here.

But honestly, if we can make this club work out here, it will excel anywhere. We’re lucky that our students, they’re going to change the world. And that’s just this generation, that they are going to change the world. And they know what they want in the world, and we are blessed enough to just be a part of it.

So our NAMI club, we started during distanced learning, during Covid, with about 10 kids. And so this is our third official year I think, and we’re up to 75 leaders. And they have their own board, they have their own ideas. It is completely student-run, as Kym has said. We just get to facilitate, and figure out how to make their ideas run.

We kind of brag on campus that we are the ones that are making the changes. We are the ones that define our culture on this campus. We’re the ones that are building that connectedness that we’re all talking about, and that we’re all trying to figure out how to have. Because our kids are putting their foot down and saying, “We’re not okay with this, and we want this to happen, but we need your help.”

And so they’re pulling in from different cliques and different cultures that you would see. We have our star football player’s in our club, all the way down to our art kids, to our kids that don’t really have any friends on campus. They found friends in this club, and are now developing their own social identities and building on that. And then using those skills to further impact our site as a whole, but also our community.

Our kids had decided … It is lunchtime, I apologize. Our kids had decided that they wanted to kind of put up crisis line info, because they know that their peers are struggling. Or we do these huge whiteboard prompts, where everybody comes in and they can write things to the other kids to kind of encourage them through these hard times. And it’s a grassroots movement out here.

Also, there was this tradition with our incoming freshmen. That, during these rallies, they would get booed. Loud screaming, boo, you’re a freshman, as kind of like this initiation to or Orestimba. And our kids saw that, and decided that wasn’t the culture of what Orestimba was going to be anymore.

And they changed that. They did this whole, they went to different groups and different rooms and, did you guys feel like that was okay? Is that what we want Orestimba to be, and is that how we’re bringing people into our circle? And that doesn’t happen anymore. We’re now on the second year where our freshmen, coming first day, are applauded. And they have mentors on campus, and they’re pulled into our clubs and into our community so that they know Orestimba is a safe place for anybody, new, old, doesn’t matter. It is a home for kids that don’t have a home.

In the community itself, our kids also decided to do a school board resolution saying that May is going to be mental health awareness month, district-wide. We take our club to all of the elementary sites, our junior high site, which now has also started their own kind of NAMI-based club, to make sure that these conversations are happening in all grades, and all levels, so that kids come up knowing it’s okay to struggle and they’re not alone. And that they have a space, a safe space to talk about those struggles and fight it for other people.

We also have partnered with the Red Cross. We’re doing blood drives twice a year. And we’re actually, we’re doing pretty good. We donate about 70 to 80 units of blood throughout the year to combat the blood crisis, but to also talk about these underprivileged areas, and these people that need blood. And the fact that just because you get a blood transfusion and you leave the hospital, doesn’t mean that you’re going to feel okay. And kind of bringing that conversation full-circle, where I’m glad that you’re feeling better, I’m glad that you’re doing good, but it’s okay to still struggle with everything that happened, and to try to figure out how to move forward.

I can talk about my club all day. My kids are amazing, and they are going to change this world. And I can see their impact on the site, on this town. And I can a hundred percent, I will back this, say that if you bring this to your site and to your town, you will see the same changes, and your kids will also save the world in a better way.

So my info is on the first slide, which you guys have access to. If you have any questions or concerns about starting this club, email me. Because I’ll be very honest, but I do believe in this club, because I have seen what it does to Orestimba.

I’m going to hand it back over to Jen. She’s going to talk more about everything. But again, if you have any questions, please don’t be shy.

Jennifer Baker:

Thank you so much, Brittney. I just can’t say enough good things about Brittney and her co-advisor, Julia Ginuga. They are rock stars. What they’ve done at Orestimba, and the family. It’s a school family that they’ve been able to create that connection, that our fabulous keynote speaker spoke to so eloquently.

And so at this point, I’m going to just kind of wrap things up a little bit, and I see some great questions. So I might try to answer a couple of those as I go through these slides. Stanislaus, it has been our commitment to leverage and align funding sources, that we’ve strategically amplified the impact of the NAMI on Campus high school clubs. And enabling them to reach more youth, and create sustainable programs. The Mental Health Services Act Innovation Grant that Kym’s talked about, was awarded to us by Stanislaus County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services, really allowed for the hiring of Kym. Who, with her creativity and ability to connect with the advisors and students, was a catalyst in propelling the clubs to where they are now.

The efforts in Stanislaus are serving as a benchmark for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, to expand the NAMI on Campus high school clubs beyond California, aiming to take them into a national initiative. Because NAMI on Campus for the high schools had only been here in California.

Two additional funding sources facilitating the expansion of the clubs to our middle and elementary schools, because I did see that question on there. We’re using the student behavioral health incentive program, and this past year we were funded for a second round of Project Cal-Well Aware grant.

So currently, NAMI itself does not have a middle school club or an elementary school club. So that’s where the middle schoolers went, hey, wait a minute. I see our, was it Ross Middle School in Houston? And they saw that their Houston High Club had this great, awesome NAMI on Campus high school club. And they went, hey, just like any sibling, we want to be a part of that. So they created the Minds Matters Club. And then I have a couple of other districts that are using their kindness counts clubs to start modeling through. So really creating that programming all the way from elementary, to middle, to high school.

If after hearing our presentation today, you would like to start your own NAMI on Campus High School Club, NAMI California, partnering with the California Department of Education, can help with sustainability grants of $500. They provide training on various mental health topics, and offer quarterly support calls for the clubs and their advisors. If you want more information, contact the NAMI on Campus high school clubs coordinator, or visit their website at the link listed in this slide. Hilva Chan from the California Department of Education will be joining us for the Q&A, if you have specific questions on how to start a club on your campus.

We just want to take a moment to extend our gratitude to all those listed in this slide, who have contributed to the club’s success. While I highlighted the collective impact that students are making, it’s crucial to acknowledge that addressing mental health requires the collaboration of us all. Collectively, we are stronger together.

And lastly, we’ll conclude with this renowned parable: A man and a woman were fishing on the riverbank when they saw a woman struggling in the current, they rescued her. Soon they saw a man struggling, they rescued him too. This continued all afternoon. Finally, the exhausted pair decided to go upstream to find out where and why so many people were falling in. They discovered a beautiful overlook along the river’s edge, without any warning or protective barriers. The couple went to the community leaders to report the number of victims they had rescued, and explained the connection to the unprotected overlook. Community leaders agreed to install a protective guard, and post warning signs. Preventing the problem saves resources, energy, and lives.

This parable shifts focus from downstream, more individualized treatment, to upstream prevention strategies for the whole community, with a focus on the vulnerable, offering restorative solutions that lead to personal community and societal wellbeing. The essence of this parable often underscores the significance of seeking guidance from community leaders.

We hope that what we’ve shared, and what you heard earlier from our fabulous keynote speaker, Dr. Porsche, on creating a climate of healing has helped to persuade you to recognize the invaluable insights and wisdom that you contribute to our community. We urge you to support and empower the voices of young people, with their creativity and ingenuity, are likely to offer solutions adults might overlook.

And with that, we want to extend our heartfelt gratitude for joining us on this journey today, and for your dedication as champions for Youth health and wellbeing. And we’ll be opening it up for questions and answers. Like I said, I saw some really great ones come in that we’ll help field, and our fabulous West Ed team will help direct us on where we should go next.

Kenwyn Derby:

Thank you so much, Jennifer, Kym, and Brittney. Yes, we have lots of people thanking you, and saying yes to lots of the things you mentioned throughout this session.

I think I’d like to open with a question. So, you already addressed some of the questions, Jennifer. Thank you. I’d like to ask a simple question, and then a maybe more complex question.

And I think I’m going to start with Brittney, and then if anyone else has additional thoughts on this question, then jump in. So somebody wants to know about the students and the student leaders. So a simple question, I think, is student leaders are high school students. Is that correct?

Brittney Clark:

As long as your club is at a high school, yes.

Kenwyn Derby:

Yeah. So when you use the term leader, you mean the students?

Brittney Clark:

Of course. Yeah, we have a board on. . . our president, vice president, secretary, treasurer. We also have what we call a social media manager. They’re our photographer and design our graphics for our Instagram pages. But they’re all high school students, all elected by each other.

Kenwyn Derby:

That’s great. So that’s part of that empowerment. We want this coming from the students with [inaudible 00:42:58].

Brittney Clark:

Completely student-run.

Kenwyn Derby:

Yeah. Jennifer, could you stop sharing your slides so that people can see all of us on the screen a little bit bigger?

Jennifer Baker:

Absolutely. I’ll make that happen.

Kenwyn Derby:

Thank you. And I forgot to mention, we’re welcoming, Hilva Chan from CDE as well. So thank you Hilva for joining.

So, more about the students. People want to know how you recruit students. So this is maybe a question for everyone broadly. But Brittney, at your school it’s so, 75 students doing anything to me is an amazing feat. And the person that asked the question was thinking about how students are really self-conscious, and maybe the ones that are more shy or insecure wouldn’t be the ones likely to put themselves into that context. And so, how do you recruit students?

Brittney Clark:

Honestly, we had kind of the same worries upfront. Because a lot of the kids that are interested in talking about mental health, or struggling with mental health, do tend to be more on the quiet side because of that taught stigma. And that, hey, you got to keep it quiet, we don’t do that.

So what we did was, we started with a couple of kids that knew us personally. We work on this campus with them, they know who we are, and we start having those conversations.

“Hey, do you ever think about this kind of stuff?” Or, “Hey, I used to struggle with this stuff. I wouldn’t want to. Your age is hard, dude, I get it. Life sucks sometimes, I get it.” And having those kind of open conversations, where they can see us be vulnerable, and know that we live the same life.

Then when we go out to do club rushes, or community events where the kids are out there leading, we’re there with them. We’re right next to them, and we’ll kind of start the conversation and pull in other kids. “Hey, you want to come talk really quick? Hey, we’re doing this thing, you want to write on the whiteboard?”

And as the kids see that we’re kind of believing in and building it too, they take over. I really only have to interact for three minutes, and then I step back and even my shyest kids are up there. Hey, come write, come talk, come do this.

And so they kind of build in that sort of confidence, and that awareness that we’re on it together, and that’s what recruits.

Kenwyn Derby:

Great. Kym, do you have anything to add to that where you’ve seen in other places?

Kym Barber:

Yeah, and I agree with Brittney. The most effective way that I have been encouraging advisors to start their clubs has been with finding one person on campus who can be that champion, one student. And then even if they’re not well-connected, they have a small group. And that small group has more groups, and it just starts to grow.

But I started thinking, too, about some strategies for recruiting. And what if the club rush became kind of gamified? So that really had a club rush event, so that students were encouraged not necessarily to join, but maybe through a passport path project, maybe had to get stamps at three different club stations during the lunch period.

And maybe that club rush event should be during a rally period, instead of just during lunch, so that there’s an extended period. And then just gamify it, and make it fun.

Maybe students who get those three stamps could maybe win a gift card or something, so that it becomes really important. Because if we recognize that connection is important, then providing those opportunities for being part of a club, whether it be NAMI or anything else, tobacco prevention or if it’s a culture club. Whatever it is, it creates that sense of belonging.

And so as a school, if we want to foster that connection, then we need to really embrace the idea of connecting those students with those clubs.

Kenwyn Derby:

Thank you. So we have a lot of questions. I’m going to combine, kind of thinking about finances.

So Jen, you already addressed, how do you fund this, where can you get grants? Here’s a couple other money-related questions. One is, are advisors compensated? I don’t know who can answer this one.

I know Brittney, you could answer for you. But how about somebody else answer for system-wide. Are advisors compensated for this?

Kym Barber:

For our districts, we found that through the grant, the Innovation Grant, we’re able to give the grant funds to the schools, and every district decides for themself how they’re going to compensate. So sometimes the schools will compensate, but it’s always district-wide, and they’ll compensate a specific amount. But other districts don’t. It just depends on the district itself, and the negotiation that they make with the union.

Kenwyn Derby:

Okay. Hilva, do you have anything else to add? Ideas for how someone might fund this that we haven’t already heard?

Hilva Chan:

The CDE provides, I work with NAMI to provide some club stipends. So we’re actually thinking about providing maybe a bigger stipend to a district, similar to just what Kym said, right? The district can’t decide whether they want to compensate their staff or not.

Because we’ve talked with legal, and there’s some concerns about if we provide stipends to staff directly, it may constitute an employee-employer relationship. So we want to stay away from that. If we provide stipends to the district, they can decide if they want to provide some kind of incentive to the advisor.

Kym Barber:

We did the same thing. I agree, Hilva, we found the same thing. We did not want to go into that employee-employer relationship with the advisor as a county office of ed. We preferred the districts to do that. So we do an MOU with the district, and then they decide how they’re going to put the money into the schools.

Kenwyn Derby:

Thank you. Someone asked a question about the curriculum. So, especially given the community that you’re in, in Orestimba, but so many of our schools have really diverse populations.

And so can anyone speak to the NAMI curriculum, and how culturally responsive it is or how it can be made more culturally responsive, if you find that it’s needing work?

Brittney Clark:

So I know what we did at Orestimba, but one of the months in the curriculum itself is all about culture and mental health. And talking about the different community struggles, the different access levels in communities. The access levels to doctors, and how all of that kind of affects that.

So in our club, we took that month and kind of spread it throughout the whole year. Where, when we’re talking suicide prevention, we are still putting in different crisis lines with different languages, and different kind of demographics represented. Trans-focused lifelines, LGBT-focused lifelines, and all of these different cultural bubbles, I would call.

Because in Stan County, we are pretty rural. So we’re not very aware of each other’s diversity, unfortunately. And then in the other months, if we’re talking about careers and we’re bringing in people, we’re going to try to focus on making sure that we have different skin colors, and different backgrounds, and different opportunities represented.

So we took the one month of curriculum, and just made sure that we adjusted that in all of the months when we talk.

Kenwyn Derby:

Thank you. Any other thoughts, Kym?

Kym Barber:

I wanted to just mention too, that the Minds Matter clubs that we do in Stanislaus County really follow the same monthly mental topics that NAMI clubs do. The curriculum from NAMI, California, really is the monthly mental health topics. So the way that they’re implemented in the school is completely determined by the students.

Kenwyn Derby:

We have only another minute or so for questions, and I think I’ll take two people’s questions and kind of combine them. So this is about messaging.

One, how could someone go to an administrator of a school, or even a district and make the case for these clubs? And then if you’re in a conservative community that might shy away from talking about mental health, how can that message be crafted to be more successful?

And I would really love to hear from almost everyone here. So someone directed one of those to Brittney. I’m thinking, Jennifer, from your perspective, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And then we’ll move through the whole group.

Jennifer Baker:

We actually live in a pretty conservative community, here in the Central Valley. It’s pretty diverse in a lot of ways as well. Because you saw the picture, where we’re kind of in the low mountains all the way out to kind of I-5. And through there, there’s a lot of sex, human trafficking that happens through that corridor as well.

I think from my perspective, the way I’ve seen it take off is having the Office of Education really come in there, and give that blessing, and give that support. Our districts and our community really trust our Office of Education to support them, and bringing that in on that level, and then getting great advisors like Brittney. Really having someone to kind of champion that.

We found that those advisors who really draw kids to them, and then the kids, they take it themselves. Once they get ahold of it, and that’s where I’m like, get out of their way. Give it to them, give them the tools, and see what they need. Because they are truly making it happen. Just as Brittney said, they are the ones that are going to make this happen.

There’s nothing you can do to get in the way. And I always liken it to, in my mom’s day, it was Elvis was shaking his hips, and parents didn’t like that. And my day, it was like there was cussing, and rapping, and all that stuff. And there was little parental advisories, but look where we are now.

And so that’s why, when I find funding sources, I channel it here. The Student Behavioral Health Incentive Program wasn’t necessarily to support mental health clubs, but I know how important that is to our community as a whole, and I’ve seen what it’s been able to do for these kids. So that’s, anytime I can see some sort of funneling to support that, that’s been my role and position in this.

Kenwyn Derby:

Resourceful. Brittney, any comment on how one would maybe convince an administrator who might be a little trepidatious about this?

Brittney Clark:

I would just be very black and white and honest. Because without these kinds of clubs, the reality of what is happening is not good. And they know, our administrators know that our students are struggling, and the risks of those struggles. They know that we could lose kids to this crisis, and that some of us have.

And so just being very blunt and honest. Like, hey, this will help because it’s going to give the kids a voice, and none of this is a secret. Our parents know about it, the staff knows about it, everybody knows about it. And so this is a good solution that we can do now, and that has proven to work. And just have that conversation with them.

Kenwyn Derby:

Proven to work. I’m going to ask for us to launch our feedback poll while we continue to talk for another minute. So if Brianna or Laura could launch our feedback poll. If y’all could take 30 seconds to give us your feedback on this session, we’d really appreciate it. We do take it to heart.

And then, just wrapping up on that question, we see the chronic absence and we see folks struggling at all levels. And this idea of going from the bottom up, as well as the top down to bring support for the struggling mental health of our students makes so much sense.

But let’s say someone still wasn’t all that comfortable. Kym or Hilva, anything else you can add to what Jen and Brittney just said, to advocate for this kind of program?

Hilva Chan:

We think that it ties directly to LCAP priority five and six, right? Because this is a student-led club, so it actually is a strong, very cost-efficient, tier one intervention. All you need is one carrying it out at school. And I’m sure that if you look around, you can definitely find more than one.

If you find one champion to you really advocate for that, and then just like what Kym and Brittney talked about, start with a small group, I’m sure that you are going to flourish, and bloom, and grow.

Kenwyn Derby:

That makes a lot of sense. Kym, any final thought?

Kym Barber:

Yeah, I totally agree. That when you can tie it back into the LCAP, and they understand the importance of long-term mental health, long-term success, not only in their schooling but their ability to grow and prosper as adults, it makes a huge difference in their own lives.

I know for myself, just telling those stories of my own high school experience, and how important it was for me to belong to the organizations that I did.

Kenwyn Derby:

Thank you, thank you so much. Such a wonderful idea. And everyone can implement it everywhere, we’ve even heard ideas at the elementary level.

Thank you. Again, thank you so much to our presenters from Stanislaus County for sharing all of the experience, and wisdom, and successes you’ve had. Thank you.