That’s been the main message throughout the month of May for M.J. Fletcher Elementary School’s counseling team, which celebrated Mental Health Awareness Month communicating important social and emotional learning strategies to students of all ages.

“Our goal has been to just raise awareness about the importance of our mental health,” said Christina Marsh, school social worker, who splits her time between Fletcher and Ring. “We’ve been using different toolkits from different organizations to help integrate this messaging into our morning announcements to help bring this to every single student.”

In addition to Marsh, the team that helped bring this to fruition included Laura Clark, school psychologist; Gillian LaMancuso, school counselor; Rachel Wilcox, school counselor; and Bridgett Marsh, a school-based social worker for Family Services of the Chautauqua Region.

LaMancuso helps produce the school’s morning announcements. To aid in this messaging, each day represented a different element of mental health awareness.

From left, Amarah Mosley, Malachi Hooten Perez, River Heath, Giada Battle, Willow Hall, Bryan Perrin, Charlotte Joyce, and Naeemah Paredes Fuentes stand with Fletcher psychologist Laura Clark, principal Amanda Sischo, social worker Christina Marsh, counselor Gillian LaMancuso, and counselor Rachel Wilcox. The school wore green to commemorate Mental Health Awareness Month in May.

“Each Monday was ‘Mantra Monday,’ said LaMancuso. “We gave students a mantra for that day, like ‘I am loved.’ We also had ‘Try-It Tuesday’ and ‘Wellness Wednesday.”

“A lot of the classroom teachers have had them practice these strategies after the announcements each morning and have activities that go along with it,” added Wilcox. “For the mantra of ‘I am loved,’ we asked students to think about everyone who loved them.”

In addition, the team also wrote different affirmations on sticky notes and left them all across the building for students to see throughout the month. The whole school also wore green to commemorate Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day, which fell on May 11.

“It’s nice to be able to teach them these good habits and how to take care of themselves in that way,” said LaMancuso.

These strategies, Christina Marsh noted, are all a way to help destigmatize mental health and to encourage students to seek help should they need it.

“Our hope is to show students that mental health and physical health — is all goes together,” she said. “We want to remove the stigma — we want people to realize that we need to take care of our mind like we take care of our body. We think that if we start early and in creative ways, it’ll help them stick.”

Because of Fletcher’s size, the team isn’t always able to interact with each student. Their presence on the morning announcements and throughout this month has been a way to help the students see their friendly faces and help them feel comfortable in coming to them should they need to do so.

“It’s been a great way to expose them to these important habits,” said Wilcox. “It’s nice because there’s so many classrooms and it’s so hard to get into all of them, but they immediately light up when they see us in the hall because they’ve already seen us on video. It’s been great to help them make the connection and make us into friendly faces and it’s been great to work on this as a team.”

“It’s all interactive,” Marsh noted. “We want to make it fun to learn about. It also gave the teachers a bunch of resources to help them as well. I appreciate the teachers working with us to make this a reality and (Fletcher principal) Mrs. Sischo, who allowed us to do this.”