It’s been well known for decades that high school students experience stress, but when does stress become excessive? How do students deal with this stress? Well, Heritage has taken a step in the right direction. The schools freshmen leadership class let on a day to recognize students stress and help give strategies to assist this stress. Stress Awareness Day.
The freshmen leaders set posters around the school to not only recognize the day, but also demonstrate facts about stress and stress relief. Students at Heritage were told to wear green in support of stress awareness day, being that green is thought to relieve stress and help heal.
Dr. Heidi Hanna, executive director of the American Institute of Stress, mentions that for students, not all stress is bad and there are simple things that students can do to help cope with stress.
Trying to manage stress can seem nearly impossible with all the activities, hard classes and pressure that students bring on themselves, leadership’s goal of celebrating Stress Awareness Day was to hopefully show students they’re not alone and list ways to cope with stress.
Although students appreciated the thought of the day, many of them thought it was executed poorly.
“More people would’ve known about it if we had the entire leadership class help instead of just a small group,” said Jaden Saucelo (9)
Saucelo mentions how she feels as if the day was necessary, but she does have regrets in how the day was portrayed, being that she helped put it on.
Some students like Gia Pecenka (12) thought it’s almost humorous how students were told to wear earbuds during passing period to help relieve stress, even though the majority of students already do that.
“It might’ve been more effective if teachers didn’t give out homework that day since that’s one of the main causes of students stress,” said Pecenka (12)
Pecenka thinks that raising awareness is not nearly as important as taking action.
One club at Heritage, Bring Change to Mind, decided to hand out roses on stress awareness day, as a way of cheering up students during lunch.
“As the president of this club, I thought the roses would be a good way to show students they are not alone,” Stephani Clark (12)
Although many students were unaware of the day, and it was poorly executed, now students are more interested in making the day a bigger deal for next year. Students of all grades are excited to further improve the day for next year and already have many great ideas.