By: Emily Remaklus
Paulding High School’s Personal Growth and Positive Mindset class is off to a great start this year. The class, which was first offered last year, has almost doubled in size this year. Students enrolled this year will be working on a variety of leadership opportunities such as teaching mindset lessons each month to the freshmen and sophomores, serving as mentors for Paulding Elementary students, and also becoming certified in Teen Mental Health First Aid.
Teen Mental Health First Aid is a program that the Personal Growth students are able to take part in through the help of the Paulding County OSU Extension Office which secured a grant paying for the students’ training and certification. Sarah Noggle and Michael Schweinsberg from the OSU Extension Office are coming to the Personal Growth class each Thursday for about eight weeks to instruct students on how to open the conversation on mental health and substance use challenges, understand the signs and symptoms of mental health and substance use challenges, and learn how to seek help for those who might be struggling with mental health.
Emily Remaklus, teacher of the Personal Growth class, stated, “I’ve wanted to bring the Teen Mental Health First Aid training to students at PHS for a couple years now, especially after going through the Youth Mental Health First Aid training with the other teachers here at school. So I was really happy to have a class in which we could do that this year. I’m really thankful for the help from Sarah and Michael at the OSU Extension Office with securing a grant for my class and training these students. I think they’ll really get a lot out of it.”
The students are scheduled to finish the program in early November.
