“You can’t be a student without being a human first” 

   These enlightening words came from Jozef Cruz, an undergrad psychology student at Nova Southeastern University. Jozef along with nine others are a part of a special program at Charter called the Social Emotional Learning Team Initiative. This team’s mission sparked from the emotional and social challenges that many students at Charter unfortunately faced during quarantine. In hopes of inspiring a little more attention and care into the minds of students, this team partnered with psychology majors at Nova to create several presentations on ways to cope with mental health.

   As an extension of Mindful Monday’s initial objective for students to take some time for self reflection and the overall betterment of one’s mind, body, and soul, the Nova presentations take this ambition a little step further. Parent professor Timothy Rozza cofaccilates the lessons with the classrooms, and then sends students Emily Martinez, Evelyn Pinto, Megan Alicea, Ally Shah, Meagan Fernandez, Kylah Michel, Neida Rangel, Quinn Tompkins, Aimee Villar, and  Jozef Cruz to inspire others to open up, and provide helpful advice to anyone who may need it. In the past weeks these presentations have “proven to be successful and effective and students are opening up and taking these strategies to heart.” Ms. Velez truly believes that these semester long presentations will benefit all those who listen. 

   One of the topics mentioned that is a main contributor to Charter culture is balancing stress. With Charter students being known for their active involvement in not only school but in society as well, stress is a common barrier in their lives. Practicing time management is a prominent solution that the presenters advised, saying that practicing this would lead to recognizing  priorities and finding limitations. Everyone has their own coping methods of dealing with stress, and according to Emily Martinez, “ We can’t do academics if we don’t have a healthy mental state.”  The presenters stress in every presentation about grounding ( 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can do.) and being in the moment sometimes helps to calm down the anxieties of the outside world and reflect on how to make the next best move.

   Peer to peer presentations allow students to be able to open up more; they are seeing similar personal hardships in someone just a couple years older, conversing about them brings a sense of comfort that sometimes adults cannot provide. As students in highschool and middle school are sometimes overlooked because of their age, it is important for these programs to exist and assist in the betterment of mental health for youths.