[Music] welcome to the mcps mental health awareness week day two i'm dr christina connolly the director of psychological services for mcps and your host for tuesday's happenings every day during this week i will be coming to you virtually to give you the daily rundown of the day's breakout sessions and offerings to help me introduce today's lineup i am pleased to introduce the deputy superintendent of schools for mcps dr monifa mcknight welcome to mental health awareness week good morning dr connolly it's good to see you it's so great to be here to talk about all the
things that mcps is doing to support mental health and well-being so i'm excited to be here and engage in this discussion with you thank you for having me oh thank you for joining us and as we talk about mcps's commitment into mental health and well-being and so we do have an understanding that many of our families you know may not be willing to have their children participate um in mental health and that's because he knows you know there's a long history of people being you know potentially like placed in prisons or institutionalized instead of receiving
the treatment that we need and we understand that there is a stigma but we also realize that poor mental health also does correlate with many of the mega negative outcomes including poor academic achievement behavioral problems and issues with truancy within our schools and mcps has stressed the importance of the development of mental health and social emotional learning skills and the need for mcps to provide supports and resources to help our students maximize mental health and one and well-being and so with today our theme is being peaceful and so dr mcknight what does being peaceful mean
to you how do you find peace in your life now um in comparison to maybe before the camp the pandemic with covet 19. sure so i think peaceful is an important state of mind because it gets you centered and thinking about your purpose and no matter what's happening around you it just keeps you focused and so i know it's a very important part for me it was before cobra 19 and still is and i think given different circumstances you do different things to find your piece like for instance now it's october the fall is coming
in and just taking a nice walk on a trail not far from my home where i'm able to see the colors of the trees change and seeing animals run around and just seeing the beauty of nature is a very important part for me to include in my day because that is what brings peace to me and sometimes it's just being still because in the busyness of everything that we're doing everything we have to do you just don't have those moments often and so to take advantage of that and to stop and look around and just
honestly see all the things that are beautiful around us that we can just be grateful for it's definitely a way that i find peace in these days and i i think it's important for everyone to figure out what that meaningful moment is for them excellent i mean when we talk about what you're describing is a concept called visualization and being able to just watch and pay so much attention like even like when you're looking at the trees look at the colors look at if you see any animals birds or other things within the trees i
mean as you're taking this walk and it helps your mind to kind of relax stop thinking about maybe some of the stress and pressures that are in your day um and it allows you to have a moment where you can just breathe and so right now i want us to give an example um because this this goes into concepts of mindfulness and um if you don't mind and indulge me a little bit let's just take a brief moment and do just a quick breathing exercise um to help us so that and we can demonstrate to
our families just how easy it is just to take a couple of seconds to just be in the moment to breathe and it literally helps our heart rate to go down helps to not to stimulate those endorphins and hormones that can create feelings of stress um and just helping you to be in this moment so real quick so and if you want to close your eyes or not it's okay but we're just going to do some deep breathing in and out so i'm going to sit there and place your hands in your lap take a
moment and i want you to breathe out one two three four just pause and then breathe in one two three four and hold it and breathe out one two three four pause and then breathe back in one two three four hold it and then slowly breathe back out thank you and just like that and for our families that are watching us you can do that at home and you can just take a few minutes just breathing in slowly and breathing through your nose breathing back out and just a way of just helping all of us
just to calm down be in the moment and just helping us to relieve some of the stress um that we're all experiencing during this time and so part of this is also when we think about the um importance of mental health so dr mcknight why do you believe that it is important for us to provide mental health supports for our students um and providing supports and interventions for our teachers and even our families absolutely first doctor conley thank you for that moment of just taking a deep breath and exhaling i did not do that before
covet 19 to be very honest and i actually have the app on my watch that says stop and breathe and i started doing it over the past few months and it does make a difference so for all who i observe do it it's like a gift that you didn't know existed um in terms of mental health for our i'll start with our students i think it's very important to always remember that our students are you know they're young they're thriving and resilient in a lot of ways and sometimes because they are young thriving and resilient
many tend to look at them and think they have no no problems life is easy they haven't they haven't fully gotten into adulthood yet but for them there are so many emotions that they carry as young people you know young children trying to figure out who they are when they first come to school their friends our adolescents are always you know struggling just at that age that we all know we went through and trying to figure out you know who our friend groups are and how do we make connections with others and build those relationships
and and and for our high schools as well i mean they're thinking about what the next journey is after high school um and and all of that brings along stress and so it's important for us not to look at them and just see them as children or students and think that oh they really don't have anything to worry about yet because they do and we all manage those those things that just aren't always on the forefront and so for our students we have to continue to think about what we can do for them think of
age-appropriate ways to get them to process their thinking and their feelings because that's critically important and that's why i'm so glad we're a part of the mcps family which we value this and how we work with our students when we're in school when we're virtually interacting with each other just knowing that it always has to be a priority and for our teachers i i you know and our staff members in mcps their model is to give when you come into education no matter how you're serving a school system you are constantly giving in and thinking
about what you give as service to others and service to our students and so when you are constantly providing service to another to think about what it is that you need for yourself to refuel to provide service for others is so important and so for our teachers who basically stand on a stage every day because that's that's what teaching is and being that that teacher that that support system that kind face for students is critical they have to have a way to to refuel themselves and to make sure that they are being taken care of
in terms of their own mental um wellness and things and so i'm appreciative for our staff and appreciative for you dr kyle and your staff for making so many resources available to our to our staff members because they need it they benefit from it and this has to be at the core of who we are and how we take care of each other how we take care of each other right now i cannot say that enough if i said it a million times it still wouldn't be enough we have to take care of each other
in any circumstance but most importantly now when we're all navigating life circumstances and and for our families you know we ask them engage on this journey with us um if they have not done things to support mental wellness within their households within their families let's do it now it's another way to connect and even though a family is connected by blood and connect you know and interact with one another to connect in a way to say how are we taking care of each other's mental state is a different conversation but a necessary conversation right and
you know and really thank you for that because when we talk with families you know many times we talk around you know some of the physical health issues that are going on and we want to make sure that families do understand that the mental health is equally important you know because the brain is an organ just like your heart your lungs other things and you've got to take care of that equally um and so we just want to make sure our families you know do understand this and we continue to work on the reduction of
stigma and so and as we're going through our week we just want to make sure we um remind our families that today's tip of the day is to don't forget to breathe and so and as we went through and went through our mindfulness activity you know we just want to make sure you know families remember that our students remember that our staff remember that um to as a way of helping you and your mental health is a simple task that you can do to support your own self-care um always and so as each day of
this week we will be virtually bringing our community sessions about various aspects of mental health all of these breakout sessions are on our website let's check out some of the sessions and videos available today we have sessions about finding happiness during covid coping with change self-care and kindness and managing stress and anxiety so dr mcknight as you see our list of videos and sessions that are available are there any in particular um that pique your interest well they all pique my interest because again i think every day brings something different every day brings something different
whether you know i i i could use the example of i could feel very uh calm in one moment and then something happens that uh surprises me and i'm like oh you know uh this may present some anxiety for me or for someone else what do i do and and so um just that that whole anxiety piece resonates because um i don't consider myself personally an anxious person but um sometimes i think we have these feelings and we haven't even identified exactly what they are yet you know like it could just be worry and so
uh that one does pique my interest for for that reason and um i i they they all i think just pertain to each of us in a different way and and uh i hope to be able to log in and and and get a glimpse at all of them to see how i can benefit personally and others can benefit from each of the sessions because i know they're all great and will be helpful all right thank you dr mcknight and so we are also offering students opportunities to earn student service learning hours or ssl hours
there is a link on the website that explains how to do this but basically students need to watch two or more breakout sessions of their choice and write a reflection about what they learn and how they will use what they learn to better their lives and the people in their community thank you dr conley for this amazing opportunity for our students to to earn ssl hours during this time our students are thinking about different ways to help during this pandemic and many of them have come up with different creative ways but some of them also
just uh you know sharing concern about you know being virtually not having an opportunity to interact with others each other and it's really hard for them so students take this opportunity to to treat yourself twice to one get in and see what these lessons all about and and and secondly uh to be able to earn the ssl hours so so gift yourself twice in this way and again thank you dr conley this is awesome what a great idea you all came up with to do this thank you thank you and so because we do want
to make sure our students get those necessary hours and as you said get the bonus of getting more information about mental health to help them with their education so i also want our viewers to know that if they miss monday's keynote address that they can simply go to www.mcpsmentalhealth.org go to monday and click on that link dr mcknight did you get a chance to watch dr jill bowen cam's keynote address yes dr conley i did and i'll tell you what resonated with me was her discussion around resiliency fostering wellness and most importantly knowing that it
is okay to say it's okay not to be okay that's a challenge for people sometimes and um the thing is this pandemic has made all of us vulnerable in different different ways and so if we're not okay in one moment it doesn't mean that we can't do things to get ourselves in a better space but just to release yourself to be able to say i am not okay it's perfectly fine to do so because then you let others know that you may need help you may need a listening ear whatever it may be so that
really resonated with me and i'm so glad she said that and and you know now is the time that we have to support each other and and take care of one another and be kind most importantly um this is tough for everyone so i appreciate her comments there yes absolutely and i also thought her discussion about how families should take advantage of all the resources mcps and the county offers we really do have a breadth of services available to our students staff and families absolutely and i'll also say mcps has been in partnership with the
county because we're looking at this as a whole community responsibility and when we look at it as a whole community responsibility that means there aren't these lines that stops the services but we look at how we are supporting the children our children's parents their civil you know everyone the entire family and that's a benefit to how we work together here in montgomery county as well which i am so grateful to be a part of this community for that purpose so uh yeah that that's important yes no and thank you and you know and as we're
providing these services also for our mental health awareness week you know this is another available resource for our families in order to get information about the services available here in mcps and also available throughout the county and so i want to thank you so this was a huge effort but worth it and before we sign off today i want to make sure everyone knows about saturday's live mental health resource fair and q a session um this is going to be hosted on zoom and this webinar will feature panelists from mcps county agencies and non-profits about
a variety of mental health services that are available the community can join the webinar to ask questions to these experts or watch it live on youtube this event is on saturday from noon to 1 30 p.m links to attend can be found on the website under saturday's offerings and folks can submit their questions in advance by going to the website and clicking the submit a question button dr mcknight will you be joining that event i definitely will be joining i look forward to seeing so many participants log in based on our discussion today so i'll
be there and i look forward to seeing everyone else there as well oh that's awesome and so dr mcknight so i enjoy talking with you today thank you for helping me share tuesday's happenings with our community my pleasure great to connect with you and our families all right so that is all for today see you tomorrow for day three of the mcps mental health awareness week be well be safe and be peaceful bye
