Activity period will resume assembly bell schedule for every Wednesday starting Wednesday, Jan. 15, as sophomores continue Mental Health First Aid training.

Seniors will be doing career prep such as building resumes and practicing for Interview Week later on in the semester. Juniors will do five weeks of preparation for the free ACT provided by the district. Freshmen will participate in the 10 week Too Good For Drugs program which talks about substance abuse. After the program, they will learn about the Seven Mindsets and digital citizenship.

“We have a lot for them,” Associate Principal Brandi Sanderson said. “They’re going to be doing some of the Seven Mindsets that kind of builds into the mental health stuff. We do realize that not every junior feels like they’re going to college and needs that ACT, but feel like it’s not going to harm anyone by doing five weeks of prep.” 

Feedback from the fall semester concerning the Mental Health First Aid training for sophomores have prompted some changes to the program.

“The sophomores are the ones we really tweaked,” Sanderson said. “We tried a guest speaker route, but that wasn’t really fair to the guest speakers in a lot of ways. Forty-five minutes is a lot of time to talk and keep students engaged. We’re tweaking that to make it a little more interactive.”

Sophomores who rotated out of the Mental Health First Aid training will instead focus on the Seven Mindsets. The program teaches students key ideas on how to be successful in life.

“It teaches them how to build goals and reach them, how to dream big and do the things that successful people do,” Sanderson said. “When they did the research on successful people these are the seven things that were common with those people. They’ve divided it up into seven mindsets and each mindset has several lessons under it. It’s going to take a while, but it’s also interactive and engaging. It’s a great program.”