State to join with sports teams to help kids
‘Resiliency curriculum’ to promote mental health in schools
Casey DeSantis, Florida’s first lady, on Friday announced a new “resiliency curriculum” aimed at improving the mental health of Florida kids through partnerships with pro sports teams across the state.
Speaking at the Amway Center in downtown Orlando and flanked by Gov. Ron DeSantis, famed football coach Lou Holtz and state education officials, Casey DeSantis said the new curriculum would focus on “key fundamentals of teaching kids how to be resilient,” such as problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.
“We are changing the narrative on mental health and re-framing it to resiliency and hope,” she said, saying it was important to remove the stigma surrounding kids struggling with their mental health.
Among the sports teams announced as partners in the effort were the Orlando Magic, Orlando City Soccer Club, the Orlando Pride, the Miami Dolphins, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Florida
Marlins, the Tampa Bay Rays, the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers, among others.
The announcement came two hours after Ron DeSantis kicked off the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference, which is being held at the Hyatt Regency Orlando through the weekend.
The first lady played a video mash-up of athletes preaching perseverance over bad luck, injuries, missteps and defeats.
“The athletes are going to be on the front lines communicating this message of resiliency and hope directly to Florida’s children,” she
said.
Casey DeSantis said she hoped the athletes’ messages would serve as a “counter-balance” to negative things youths may see on social media.
“We’re going to be talking directly to a lot of these [pro] teams about what can we do to inspire our kids to have hope, be resilient and persevere,” she said.
Holtz, 84, whose hall of fame coaching career in football spanned 44 years, underscored the message by recounting not championships and bowl wins but personal tragedies, including a fire triggered by a lightning strike that destroyed his $1.6-million home in Lake Nona in June 2015. He remembered comforting his late wife, Beth, promising they’d recover.
“The good Lord put eyes in the front of our head rather than the back so we can see where we’re going instead of where we’ve been,” he said.
Holtz said everyone faces difficulties.
“Life is about how you cope with them,” he said
In 2019, Florida required school districts to provide a minimum of five hours of instruction annually to students in grades 6-12 students about mental health awareness. Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said a toolkit for teaching resiliency is available on C-Palms, a state-maintained educational resource site.
The initiative, which also emphasizes volunteerism, will help mold “a great society of empathetic people, people who are responsible, people can celebrate adversity and have that resiliency to conquer the world,” Corcoran said. “When you do that, you don’t just end up with great educated students, you end up with great citizens, great spouses, great participants in society.”