Stress management is only half the battle
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WHY SJHS NEEDS TO FACE MENTAL HEALTH BEFORE IT STARTS—NOT AFTER
Recently, St. Joseph High School has introduced a myriad of stress management and mental health awareness programs, ranging from advisory periods set aside to discuss these topics to a visit from a mental health magician. The guidance office now offers a Zen room where stressed-out students can find some peace and quiet. Students and staff alike are talking openly about mental health and how the school can work to improve it.
These programs and conversations are crucial to fixing the rampant stress problem occurring throughout America’s high schools. According to the Pew Research Center, 61% of teenagers feel a lot of pressure to earn good grades. Stress has followed the increased pressure to get into a good college and succeed academically. 70% of students in the same survey worry about getting into their top choice college.
“On top of school, we have things outside of it, like sports or jobs, or even family issues. All these things piled up gets stressful, and we’re never really given a break,” Gabrielle Dilley, 12, said when asked what the most stressful part of school is.
St. Joseph High School is working to manage that stress in a variety of ways, and many of their programs are getting results.
However, the school’s programs mainly focus on reducing the stress that students face, not preventing it. Wouldn’t it be better to avoid all that stress entirely, rather than getting rid of it once it occurs?
The problem with that idea is simple: the stress that stems from school is often unavoidable. No matter how stressful exams are, teachers and administrators still need to measure our knowledge. Students still need to practice their skills with homework. We can’t design the entire school system around reducing stress, but we can certainly make improvements.
One way to help prevent stress might be teaching students academic skills to help them succeed, such as how to study and how not to procrastinate. Some students pick up these skills on their own, but many struggle to figure out the best way to succeed for longer than they should. Maybe a GO Time session could be used to teach those students how to make their academic experience easier.
Another possible solution could be to reduce the amount of homework given to students each day. Practice is essential in subjects like math, and review can help many students nail down the concepts that they learned in class. However, when homework is assigned just to keep students busy, it adds unnecessary stress to students’ lives and prevents them from working on assignments that are more important.
““If the school gave us an hour a day to get our stuff done—kind of like GO Time, but more of a study session—then it would be easier for students to only focus on school for that hour and get their homework done, rather than having to go home and try to do it all after school,” Gabrielle said.
Finally, the focus on preparing for college that starts as soon as freshmen enter the high school places expectations on students to mentally move on to adulthood before they have time to be teenagers. Yes, we need to prepare ourselves for college, but it’s also important to take the time to be a high schooler. The stress of college prep can keep students from fully experiencing the four short years they have at SJHS, whether they’re skipping sports games to study or piling on extracurriculars they’re not interested in instead of bonding with friends.
Overall, I truly appreciate St. Joe’s efforts to help reduce student stress levels. I just think that the process could start even earlier—before the stress builds up. There are many possible ways to fix this issue, and I hope that SJHS finds one that works for the staff and the students.