We are grateful to Henrico County’s Godwin High School Counseling Director, Nicole Hansinger, for partnering with CKG in the soft launch of our new e-learning Life Transitions Toolkit. Godwin rolled out the online mental wellness course to ninth and tenth grade health classes in the weeks leading up to winter break.
The Life Transitions Toolkit uses text, video and self-assessment surveys to encourage students to think about their own life experiences, including a focus on the very unexpected COVID-19 quarantine. It also provides a downloadable self-assessment plan, and grade specific downloadable journals. “Our goal is for students to learn from their past experiences and provide tools to help ease the stress of future transitions and life changes,” explains Susan Lindsay, CKG Director of Programs. “We focus on teaching teens to proactively care for their mental health, ideally before there is a mental health challenge. These are tools that will serve them their entire lives.”
Each Mental Wellness Toolkit comes with an Educator Guide which provides learning objectives, discussion questions, and FAQs. The toolkits are designed to be used as independent student-led learning, supporting curriculum resources, or a hybrid use between the two. Godwin students completed the online Life Transitions Toolkit and discussion in one class period, and health teachers taught additional stress awareness and mindfulness information in the following health class period.
We thank all of the Godwin students who provided invaluable feedback on the course, which will help us to make adjustments and improvements as we move toward a larger roll out in early 2021.
What Godwin students had to say…
“I felt like it was a good lesson and it helped me learned things that could help me and my friends, especially during this time of uncertainty.”
“I thought the lesson was extremely effective in teaching me some new ideas in how to handle my stress with activities I can do to help me manage my workload. I also felt comforted in that I got to see that I was not alone with the struggles of high school, and it reminded me to keep working hard and do the best I can.”
“I can’t speak for anyone but myself but I am a young girl who suffers from depression and anxiety so it was a very beneficial lesson for me!”
“I liked the format, it had a video experience of someone and then a document with tips and worksheets – this is what I liked about it.”
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