HOW CAN WE BRING AWARENESS TO SOMETHING SO SERIOUS?

Hello, welcome to my first digital final presentations at GCE! Unfortunately, final presentations were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the show must go on! For our Final Presentations, we were asked to create our very own guiding question based on one of our core classes. So, for my presentation, I am going to explain the importance of mental health and how we can try and bring awareness to that.

My guiding question: how can we bring awareness to something so serious?

Mental illness or mental health is one of the most complex issues in the world, especially for children and teens. It is often ignored and young people are often told to "get over it" or "you're fine" and "it's just a part of life." However, navigating childhood and adolescence can be extremely challenging and it is easy to become overwhelmed, especially when they're handling things like schoolwork, hormones, peer pressure, extracurricular activities, etc. In my experience, teenagers are held to an even higher standard and expected to be something or someone that they are not. More times than not adults and even their peers cannot see all the pressures that that teenagers are under. Due to fear of embarrassment and shame, teenagers tend to hide their issues with humor or mask their true feelings by telling themselves and the world that they are fine.

(This is somewhat what I want the stickers to look like.)

S.S.,  Semicolon, 2020.
 Grammatically, semicolons are for authors who want to end a sentence but decided not to. 
 So this semicolon is a metaphor for people who wanted to end their lives but decided not to.

My desired outcome for this project is to bring more awareness to mental illness, not just as a school but as a society. So, I think passing out stickers would spread the word faster since they are trendy, popular and they easily express a person’s views. On any given day I pass people on the streets, buses, and trains with stickers on water bottles, phone cases and/or laptops. Additionally, many activist organizations pass out stickers as a visual expression of support. I even have several stickers of support for various organizations on my own belongings. And I believe that stickers are small tokens of appreciation to advance the message of big issues.

THE M00D WATCH!

This is the last unit of Light, Sound and Time and we focused on the concept of time - what it is, if it's real, if we're just imagining it, etc. I've learned so much about time, but one thing that really caught my eye was that time is relative meaning it changes depending on the speed of light. Interesting, right? But anyway, our class went on a Field Experience to the Planetarium where we learned more about the understanding of the universe, more specifically the Bigbang and how it came to be. After that, the class focused on the history of time-telling devices such as sundials, pendulums, longitude, and latitude. I was inspired by these time-telling devices to create my very own which was the mission of our Action Project!

Please watch this video to understand this magnificent device:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP8MLIhXvCM&authuser=0

Overall, this unit was by far one of my favorites! I really liked how the concepts we learned in class relate so much to reality. I also liked making this video, it was super fun, but it took so much patience because your video may not come out the way you want it to.

MENTAL HEALTH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR GRADES!

For the second Action Project in A Nation's Argument, we were asked to take a look at our Code of Conduct, choose a rule we disagree with, and argue to change that rule. We connected this to concepts we discussed in the course such as the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and, of course, the Amendments. The purpose of this project was to amend our rules to make a stronger argument in support of the school's goals and I decided to amend our attendance policy. Specifically, allocating a certain number of mental health days to be considered excused absences instead of unexcused. Throughout this quarter, I learned how the smallest details can make your argument more convincing.

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"How can we solve the teen mental health crisis," Dazed, 2018.

This photo is a metaphor for stressed-out students who attend a school where mental health days are perceived as "missing school "just because."

GCE’s Code of Conduct includes various beneficial rules. These rules allow students to take ownership of their education, feel like an active participant in their education and feel less like a prisoner. In our open and oftentimes negotiable rules lies the “Attendance” section. After thoroughly reading them, I noticed that this Code of Conduct mentions nothing about mental health days, so I assume they are perceived as "unexcused absence." There is a small segment about student absence recommendation that reads; "in the case of unplanned, non-emergency absences, students may not be eligible to earn credit for work due on the day of the missed class." Additionally, if this rule is violated, you would have to meet with the Head of the School and your guardian, so I rewrote this as a formal syllogism to make sure I have everything correct.

These are my deductive syllogisms:

P1: Schoolwork is important.
P2: Mental health days aren't allowed.
Conclusion: Schoolwork is more important than your mental health.

Mental illness or mental health is one of the most complex issues in the world, especially for children and teens. It is often ignored and young people are often told to "get over it" or "you're fine" and "it's just a part of life." However, navigating childhood and adolescence can be extremely challenging and it is easy to become overwhelmed, especially when they're handling things like schoolwork, hormones, peer pressure, extracurricular activities, etc. In my experience, teenagers are held to an even higher standard and expected to be something or someone that they are not. More times than not adults and even their peers cannot see all the pressures that that teenagers are under. Due to fear of embarrassment and shame, teenagers tend to hide their issues with humor or mask their true feelings by telling themselves and the world that they are fine.

The Attendance Code's attention seems fixated on excused and unexcused absences, but it doesn't mention anything about mental health days. GCE should know that part of being the kind of school they push to be, includes letting students take a break every once in a while. I think every student should be given a minimum of five mental health days without penalty to provide them the time to regroup. To be fair, the days cannot be used during Action Projects and Final Presentations. This rule does not apply to students who are not actively working to maintain passing grades or who have fallen below 85% attendance. I contend that if GCE continues to works towards preparing students for the "real world," then allocating mental health days could be earned like PTO (Paid Time Off ) days and could help reduce stress.

These are my inductive syllogisms:

P1: Schoolwork is a priority.
P2: Mental health is your top priority.
Conclusion: Schoolwork is not as much of a priority as mental health.

To get to my point, mental health days aren't trivializing absences, they are simply allowing students to take time to start off fresh and regroup your thoughts. I believe they should count as excused absences because many students are dealing with issues that call for some downtime and to be frank, they deserve time to hit a pause on life's demands.

Creating this amendment will teach each student that it is okay to not be okay and feeling less than your best is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a fact that addressing mental health means better mood, improved school performances, and less physical pain. Additionally, taking a day to yourself can improve your focus, allow for more sleep, and increase performance strength. This amended Attendance policy will allow students and school staff to have more conversations regarding mental health, reduce the stigma, and increases acceptance of students' emotional states. When I showed this amendment to my fellow classmates, they agreed and made a comment saying, "mental health days are definitely something every school should approve of."

Those who signed my document: