Angevine offers ALLY to all its sixth graders
Three sixth-grade girls talked through the differences between stress and anxiety with volunteer and parent Melissa Hutcheson on a recent day in the library at Lafayette’s Angevine Middle School.
Stress, they learned, is usually triggered by an event or issue, such as an upcoming test or having too many things to do. While stress usually disappears after the event, anxiety is a longer-term problem, Hutcheson said. It often isn’t caused by a specific event and may require treatment. Both, she added, can have emotional and physical symptoms.
“When our mind feels off, our body feels off,” she said.
One of the girls shared that sometimes it’s easy for her to go to school, while “sometimes I have to sit in the car for a minute” to deal with her anxiety, even though nothing is different. Other days, her anxiety causes “really bad headaches.” Classmates shared how stress can make it hard to concentrate, prompting them to avoid completing schoolwork.
Angevine sixth graders are learning about mental health literacy this school year through the Advocates 4 All Youth, or ALLY, program. Using workbooks that include prompts and interactive activities, trained volunteers deliver lessons to small groups.
The program is free to schools like Angevine, which receive federal Title 1 funding because they enroll a large percentage of lowincome students. Impact on Education also covered the cost of background checks the adult volunteers needed to work in the schools.
Angevine was one of four Boulder Valley schools that piloted the program last school year. This school year, social studies teacher Nikki Shald petitioned Angevine’s principal to make the program part of the sixth grade Connect elective class, giving all the school’s sixth graders an opportunity to participate.
“These kids, they’re stressed,” she said. “COVID was a terrible time for middle school kids. There’s so much need for mental health education. This helps fill the gaps. Students learn coping skills and problem solving. It’s a really great program.”
Jill Kaar, a pediatric researcher, epidemiologist and associate professor in the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Medicine, developed the ALLY program before the pandemic in response to an epidemic of suicide among young people.
Drawing on her work around children’s obesity and diabetes, she wanted to create a universal program instead of the more traditional — and to her view, more stigmatizing — programs that provide targeted therapy only to students exhibiting signs of depression.
The existing programs she researched also weren’t tailored for different communities and didn’t address cultural differences, she said.
“Everyone was giving this one-stop-shop program,” she said. “We needed a better plan.”
Her program seeks to improve overall mental health knowledge and teach young people how to manage their own mental health and recognize when to seek help.
The lessons are designed to teach four main skills: identify emotions, recognize feelings and understand moods; build social connections; improve ability to manage behaviors; and increase problem-solving skills.
‘Trusted adults who will listen’
At Angevine, students recently talked about qualities that make a good friend and how they would respond to situations that included a student eating lunch alone and a student being teased during class. Then they practiced listening skills by completing a maze with their eyes closed, based on directions from a classmate.
Students said they want friends who are kind, supportive, loyal, remember details like their birthday and don’t interrupt when they’re trying to share something important.
They had different opinions on the best course of action if a student is being picked on. Some worried they could become the next target if they intervened and suggested telling the teacher. Others suggested hearing encouraging words would help. “I would want them to help me stand up for myself,” one boy said.
The volunteers leading the sessions include parents, retired educators and retired mental health professionals.
They receive online training on the program, as well as training on what protocols to follow if a student shares something concerning.
“The kids feel like they have trusted adults who will listen to them,” Kaar said. “You have all of these amazing individuals who are willing to do anything to help.”
A side benefit, she added, is that many of the adult volunteers report improved mental health for themselves and a stronger connection to their communities.
One of the ALLY volunteers leading sessions at Angevine is John Blaser, a retired fifth-grade teacher who taught for 31 years. He said schools have the curriculum to teach students about mental health, but it can be difficult to find time for social-emotional lessons when the focus is on improving academic achievement.
“This program is so needed after COVID,” he said. “It’s helping kids by raising awareness. It opens the door for communication around these concepts.”
Another volunteer is Sandra Locke, who worked as a para-educator and has a son diagnosed with schizophrenia. She said the goal is to make the lessons feel less like an assignment and more like a conversation, like chatting together on a park bench. “This is good stuff,” she said. “We’re validating everybody.”
Importance of mental health
Lafayette’s Alicia Sanchez Elementary also plans to provide the program to fifth graders in the spring. Deborah Eck, the school counselor, said the ALLY lessons line up well with the social-emotional curriculum the school already uses.
“It allows students to really make that connection with how important mental health really is,” she said. “It really helps students understand mental health more clearly. When they hit middle school and high school and there’s more independence, they have some of those basic skills to work through situations. We can never talk enough about mental health.”
Kaar has piloted the program four times with more than 1,000 students, including in schools in Colorado Springs, rural Alabama and Boulder Valley.
The current pilot is in after-school and summer programs at YMCAS in San Antonio.
She said the results show improved mental health for all participants, but especially for those who reported depression or anxiety at the start of the program. Those students reported increased self-efficacy and decreased symptoms of anxiety.
With results that show the program is effective and can be replicated, she’s now working to create a nonprofit and is hoping to find local organizations to partner with so more students can benefit.
“I have a program that actually works,” Kaar said. “It’s evidence-based. We are doing amazing things here in Boulder County, and we need others to follow. I don’t even know how far it could go because the sky is the limit.”