I’m really happy to be a part of the ‘The Live it Up Program’ which is supported by Ottawa Public Health. It’s all about learning how to live a healthy lifestyle both physically and mentally.
In the fall, myself and only a small group of selected student were chosen to represent the Live It Up Program at John McCrae High School. Every Wednesday at lunch we meet with Ms. Rusch and Ms. Talbot (our phys-ed teachers). We created a questionnaire that every high school student filled out. The questions were to find out what resources or guidance students were looking for and what’s missing in the system. It took weeks to enter all the results into the computer to come up with a summary. Now we can come up with the best resources possible to help the students in our school.
In our survey we found out that the topics that were of most concern were, mental illness, depression, drugs and alcohol abuse. It’s so important to get the information that we as students want instead of what adults think we want. With the rise in teen suicides this is obviously a subject that students need help with.
We are going to be having specialists in mental health come in to meet with us to educate us more on certain topics and then we can decide if we feel they would be good to present to the school for everyone or if just gathering information from them is enough.
Today we had our first group come in to talk about stress and different ways of dealing with it. I found the presentation really cool and I loved contributing to the conversation and drawing from my own life skills. Everyone has something of value to add and we can all learn from each other.
The last few months have been more in the organizing stages but next semester will be exciting to share all the information that we’ve gathered with the rest of the school. It’s been a great learning experience and I hope it will help a lot of people. It’s fun to meet different representatives from the City of Ottawa. I am seriously thinking of being a Sports Psychologist so all these programs give me the chance to see if the topics interest me and so far it’s been great.
I was also happy to find out that I was accepted into the Leadership Program at school again this Spring so that means more workshops and an overnight camp.I’m SO EXCITED!