On Aug. 14, Florida High held Resiliency Day, during which all high school students were required to watch mental health videos from periods one through six.
The state of Florida requires that schools provide several hours of mental health instruction each year. In the past, we have split up the videos throughout the year, but this year we used a different method.
“In the future, I would recommend breaking up the videos among different dates, and not all of them at once,” Student Council sponsor Ashley Prosser said. “I think that was a lot, especially if a student is actually experiencing some kind of struggle with their mental health. To be bombarded with those videos on that topic over and over again, all day long for seven hours could help them, but it could also have the adverse effect.”
People recommend changing the structure of the videos so students can retain the information better. Adding quizzes might be one way we can enhance the learning experience from the videos.
“I would recommend quizzing, not like the video quizzing you, but the teacher or whoever is doing the video quizzing you. Reflecting on your answer could help as well,” junior Julian Day said.
It is not just what we can add or how we can structure the videos differently; it is also about the tone and feeling the videos utilize in an attempt to engage students.
“There was one video that stands out to me, in which she sounded very unenthusiastic to be reading her script for her video, and that showed through the video. Then your audience is not engaged either,” Prosser said. “At the beginning of the day, the first video, that girl had a very conversational tone and was upbeat, and she had some inflection in her voice. I thought that was good. The tone of the message was caring, important and valuable. So I think we should still do that, I just don’t [think we should] do it the same way.”
For the years to come, we should change it from just doing all the mental health videos in one day to splitting them up. In my opinion, the best way to set it up would be to do it like we did this time, but make it into a reliance week, where we will make each day a new video in a new class period. We should also make it more interactive so students will be more engaged in the topic.
