Napa Valley Wellness Conference

Outline of session:

-A Brief History of School-Based Wellness Centers
-Overview of the initiation of the Wellness Program in SRCS
-Challenges & Successes of building “a system within a system”
-Cultural & Community reception and perception of mental health
-Hopeful Future Goals for Wellness in Schools

Take-aways will include an overview of:

-How to manage funding challenges
-How to navigate staffing challenges
-How to respond to/manage staff, student & parent ideas about wellness/mental health
-How to build a strong program that will last

● Participants will learn the background of Dynamic Mindfulness (DMind), a
research-validated movement-based mindfulness practice.
● Participants will have the option to join in an experiential practice of Dynamic
Mindfulness, which includes moving the body, breathing intentionally and centering the
mind.
● Participants will learn how DMind is a trauma-informed practice and how to share it with
others using trauma-informed delivery.
● Participants will learn strategies for how to integrate Dynamic Mindfulness into their
workplace, school and classroom settings.
● Participants will walk away with a new set of tools to reduce stress in their personal and
professional lives.

- Developing Sustainable Wellness Programs: Learn how to lead the creation and implementation of sustainable wellness programs by engrafting mental health interns, strengthening community partnerships with local universities, and fostering long-term mental health support structures in schools.
- Leading Efforts to Address Racial Inequities: Understand the role of clinical supervisors in promoting mental health programming that addresses racial inequities and prioritizes culturally responsive care, creating an environment where all students feel supported and valued.

Mental Health continues to be a top priority for employers and employees across the country. Organizations have an opportunity to move toward a proactive approach to support teachers, administrators and staff by incorporating a mindset of mental fitness. Mental fitness is a combination of activities, habits, and attitudes that contribute to overall emotional health and wellness. Like physical fitness requires activity to get and stay fit and prevent health risks, mental fitness means actively doing things to manage and respond to stress and keep our emotions and mental state healthy. We will focus on how incorporating mental fitness into your organization’s culture can lead to greater workplace well-being, satisfaction and safety.

The 12 Toolbox practices and strategies of Toolbox Project are unlike any other SEL curriculum because they were developed  in a K-8 school with students over an 8-year period. The Toolbox Project's approach is innovative in discovering and uncovering the students’ innate capacity for wholeness, which fosters genuine personal and systemic change in their lives. Welcome to the story of Toolbox Project as we share the key components that create positive lasting life long change.

Too often, individuals and school site leaders are left to figure out well-being on their own. It does not have to be that way! This session reorients us from simply "preventing burnout" on our own to proactively, intentionally promoting well-being for all staff so that we can together create the teaching and learning environments we aspire to with our students. Our well-being strategies can be used individually, but we will work through them collaboratively. We will also interact with the first educator generated measure of workplace well-being (see https://www.educatorsthriving.org/6-factors for more information) and learn how educators across the country use this tool to improve well-being.

This session will highlight the innovative work being done at Olympic High School, a continuation school, to implement multiple learning pathways tailored to meet the diverse academic and mental health needs of students. By combining structured learning pathways with correlating mental health supports, we have created an environment where students are not only able to recover credits and succeed academically but also receive the emotional and psychological support they need. This presentation will cover the development, implementation, and monitoring processes of these pathways, with insights from our staff on how we integrate mental health services, individual counseling, and group support. Data on student progress, case studies, and challenges will be shared to inspire new approaches in addressing the holistic needs of students in alternative education settings.

This Social Emotional Learning & the Arts Professional Development session explores how to use the arts as a vehicle for social-emotional learning (SEL). Participants will discover the five social-emotional learning competencies while integrating the arts with SEL. Participants will examine art lessons combined with SEL competencies conducive to a variety of instructional times.

Additionally, strategies and activities for arts-based SEL across visual and performing arts will be explored. At the culmination of the session, participants will be able to create or transform their own existing lessons to reflect SEL competencies taught through the arts.

Mentis is passionate about providing equitable, accessible, and effective mental health care to the youth in our valley. Our mission is based on educating, inspiring, and supporting the mental health needs of the community, including those with limited access to care. During this panel presentation, we are collaborating with various agencies to discuss our joint efforts in supporting the needs of newcomer youth and their families. The panel will discuss current trends, impacts of immigration on mental health, barriers to accessing care, and our successes. Furthermore, the panel will emphasize how each organization plays a crucial role in supporting youth and families during this period of transition.
The key takeaways from this panel include raising awareness about the experiences of newcomer youth, emphasizing the importance of offering a diverse range of resources, and highlighting the impact of community agencies working together as a united front. 

Session topic will cover best practices for teaching and supporting students who have experienced trauma, the impact of trauma on the brain and learning process, and the power of healing student/educator relationships in learner outcomes.

Building Community, showing empathy and a degree of self-disclosure is key to earning the trust of families to understand, see the benefits of and consent to counseling and mental health services for their students.
Showing how at Cerritos we have used parent workshops, presentations, and Wellness Room visits we have seen great strides in getting parents on board with mental health services and helping to break the stigma of these important servives.
We educate families by providing key facts and data about mental health, describe the response to intervention and 3 tiers of mental health supports at our site, we allow for open communication, address their concerns directly, highlight positive aspects of seeking help, and community engagement. We provide a tour of our Student Wellness Room so they parents can see what we are doing to help support mental health and social emotional learning.
As a community school we have partnered with local mental health agencies to bring the mental health services to our student at our school site. We also link and refer tier three cases with wrap around services if needed.

In this session, participants will learn about Effective Classroom Practices to encourage equity and belonging within the classroom community. Participants will gain knowledge on the 18 Effective Classroom Practices and the concepts behind each, connections of the practices to student culture, current research behind the practices, and how to implement the practices within the classroom effectively. These Effective Classroom Practices will specifically facilitate equity, belonging and a stronger classroom community for historically marginalized groups.

The dynamic collaborative, SHINE Napa Valley, is a group of the five largest mental health nonprofit partners in Napa County. They banded together in 2022 to develop a shared vision of how to best support local school wellness programs. They spearheaded a community mapping tool to find gaps in services, and built an aspirational network of care model to guide their work. Learn more about how to partner with local providers to find common goals and use data to explore ways to improve student wellness at your schools. 

Participants will first explore ways to enhance student resilience by teaching concrete skills (12 Tool Practices) and learn how to create a safe, caring environment that supports students' resilience and health. Then, we will briefly examine each Tool practice before exploring how to integrate the tools beyond the classroom and into the school community. Next, we explore the benefits of expanding the use of the tools into the family setting using visual cues (posters), home connection letters, and back-to-school activities. Lastly, we examine the introduction of the Family Toolbox. This allows the school to be reinvented as a health and wellness hub.

This session will explore how schools can create nurturing learning environments that enhance student well-being and academic success. Participants will examine survey data trends from the Challenge Success Student Experience Survey, administered to over 350,000 middle and high school students and focused on student well-being, belonging, and engagement. They will gain valuable tools and strategies to improve student well-being and learn how schools across the country have used critical insights about the student experience to change policies and practices.