MEMPHIS, Tennessee — Isolation, stress and fear from the pandemic have exacerbated mental health concerns over the last year. The Arlington Community Schools' district has made efforts to better reach its students to provide help when they're not doing okay.
The district now has a way to check-in with its students every single day and it allows them to do that without having to do in-person, face-to-face.
This semester, the district introduced the program known as Closegap which is available to students voluntarily from 3rd to 12th grade.
Closegap is an online daily emotional wellness check-in program that offers coping skills that students can use immediately.
“It’s helping students to be self-aware and giving us a way to identify the students that need us most," Constance Certion, ACS social and transition specialist, said.
If a student indicates that help is needed, a counselor is notified so they can respond to help them.
“In a way, you can look at it as a SOS signal for counselors and administrators that are monitoring that dashboard and then a step further to teach that student in that moment, a self-regulation or coping skill to help them get through that moment," Certion said.
When the pandemic has changed school as we know it, Certion, who is also President-elect of the Tennessee Counseling Association, researched ways to connect with students without interruption and helped bring the program to the district.
Arlington senior Landon Pleasant said he knows from his own experience and his classmates how needed the program is.
"It is that personal connection with your counselor when you don’t have it," Pleasant said. "It’s a very helpful program in the sense that it provides an instantaneous response. It provides feedback, especially now with coronavirus, when you’re not face to face as much as you would like to be.”
Pleasant is a founding chapter member of Arlington's Active Minds group which supports mental health awareness and education for students. The group is found most commonly at colleges, not high schools. It's another way students and the district are trying to prioritize mental health.
“What we’re doing here is unprecedented," Pleasant said. "It’s really good to see.”
More than 250 students were signed up by their parents immediately after the program was announced. Students have a choice whether nor not to fill it out each day.
“The fact that students are voluntarily doing this shows us that it’s meeting the need, giving them that outlet, that opportunity to express how they’re feeling," Certion said.
The process also makes it easier for students to reach out for help.
“I think when you take away that aspect of having to make the first step and actually physically walk down to a office or open your mouth to say these things, I think make it’s a little easier for these students because its with a click of the button," Certion said.
The district plans to keep the program beyond the pandemic.
