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our minds matter

  • Foster feelings of social connection, belonging, and community across the whole school
  • Empower participants to identify ways they can make their community more welcoming & inclusive for all
  • Have fun with school-wide connection events that can create new friendships
  • Reduce stigma and increase help-seeking by providing easy access to mental health resource guides

  • Entire School

  • Principal/Administration
  • Student government or leadership to help lead efforts
  • Other student clubs and organizations
  • Consider groups that may reach different teens in your school and encourage them to participate in this campaign, such as sports teams, student government, theater, cultural and identity-based student groups, etc.

  • First, determine when hosting a spirit week at your school makes the most sense.
    • Consider things like holidays, testing schedules, big sporting or performance events, and other planned initiatives to ensure you’re not “competing” for participation.
  • Next, determine which actions you will include in your “We Belong Week”. We recommend doing all of them, but you can choose just a few based on your capacity.
  • Monday: Facts about belongingness read over announcements/on the morning news, spirit week introduced, & OMM-provided sticky notes with connection & belongingness quotes placed on lockers
    • In the script, students are asked to reflect on a few questions. To make this more impactful, ask a few teachers to spend some time on this in their classes and discuss it if possible!
  • Tuesday: Suggestion box placed somewhere visible for students to share their ideas on how to make school a more welcoming, inclusive place using these prompts
    • “What do you need to feel like you belong?”
    • “What can you do to make others feel like they belong?”
  • Wednesday: Speed friending at lunch (use the speed-friending activity guide)
    • Tip for facilitating with large groups:
      • Have a few facilitators during each session so that you can break the large group into smaller groups of 15-20
      • Each smaller group should then have someone assisting with facilitating, including helping folks rotate to new positions, reading or repeating the prompt if it’s being read aloud on a microphone, and answering any questions.
      • There should still be one main person managing the time so that all groups switch at the same time.
  • Thursday: Friendship bracelet-making stations during lunches
    • Encourage teens to share at least one of the bracelets they make with new friends or folks they don’t know very well to promote new connections!
    • If you’d prefer not to do bracelets, you can also have folks create handwritten “friendship grams” for someone they don’t know well.
  • Friday: Complete “We Belong” posters with commitment statements based on the suggestion box submissions and have folks sign their names during lunches
    • Check out an example here
    • We recommend having a small group of students (along with staff members) create the poster after going through the suggestion box responses and then have the whole student body be invited to sign it
    • Then, hang it up somewhere visible in the school to remind you of your school’s commitment together!
  • Throughout the week, think about how you can include student leaders (whether that be OMM leaders, sports captains, SGA members, GSA members, cultural club members, or other influential students) in different ways:
    • Can leaders read the announcements each day?
    • Can they lead the speed friending games?
    • Can students monitor the friendship bracelet-making and encourage folks to participate?
    • Can student leaders be present during the poster signing?
    • Remember–mental health efforts are more effective when teens talk to and learn from other teens!
    • This is even more effective when teen leaders from several social groups are involved so you can reach as many students as possible.
  • Want to take the spirit a step further? Here are a few ways:
  • Leave the mental health resource sheets in a visible place in the school so folks can seek support when they need it.
  • Assign a different color to each day and encourage folks to wear these colors in addition to the other planned actions.
    • I.e. Wear yellow on Monday, blue on Tuesday, your school colors on Friday, etc.
  • Consider making some of these actions a recurring event! Maybe you host Speed Friending during lunches once a month, or set up friendship bracelet stations.
    • If you choose to do this, always make the We Belong posters visible and consider having someone (perhaps a student leader) remind folks about the importance of your commitment to belonging and community on the morning announcements, the start of lunches, etc.
  • Is there a school policy that folks named about changing school policy because of how it affects belonging? If you can, consider bringing these concerns to a future town hall/school board meeting to advocate for change.

  • Use the provided script to promote the campaign on morning announcements!
  • You don’t have to do all of these, but be sure to do at least one of the following additional actions to promote your campaign:
    • Share “teasers” about the spirit week ahead of time to get folks excited. The teasers can include a full schedule of the week’s events to give folks a heads up!
    • Hang up the quote stickers on lockers, walls, and bathroom mirrors around the school.
    • Send out calendars with the schedule for the week via email or newsletter, or have teachers hang them up in their classrooms.

  • Even just a few suggestions in the box are a success because it shows you have folks thinking about how to create a better community!
  • Did you notice folks having fun during Speed Friending or while making friendship bracelets or grams? That’s a win!
  • Lastly, how many people signed the We Belong posters? If even 25% of your student body signed, that’s a big success.
  • If your school has some kind of “school climate survey,” that includes a question about belongingness, that could also be a data point to look at!