Three children from Year 5 attended a Youth Mental Health Champion Seminar on Wednesday 27th November at Prairie Sports Village. The children were selected after delivering a short presentation about what they thought Mental Health meant and why they would make a worthy Mental Health Champion. Year 5 delivered some very interesting speeches. In the end Mrs Staples and Mrs Phipps finally selected Cain, Beatris and Melissa to take on this very important role; these children showed great empathy and a passion to support other young people.
The seminar that the children attended was led by World Champion Thai Boxer Rachael MacKenzie. The children were wowed by Rachel’s inspirational story of determination, and ambition. Having a positive mental attitude and a strong drive to prove others wrong took Rachael from an ‘unhealthy’ university student to a world champion in her field.
Over the course of the day the children were asked to consider what they thought mental health was and how they could improve their own and that of others back in school. The children discussed the need for a healthy diet, quality sleep and the need for physical activity. They also highlighted the importance of having someone they could talk to, good friends and time to be quiet and still in their day.
Rachael taught the children several physical activities as a method of supporting improved mental wellbeing, they were shown some ideas for mindfulness and they were given opportunities to practise their skills when it came to delivering a message to a group. Following on from this the children began working on an action plan for implementing the positive messages they had learnt from the day back at Springfield. The children then fedback to the other schools, who were also attending the seminar and answered question on our strategies.
The children are very excited about implementing some of the ideas/changes as they feel that this will improve and support mental health and wellbeing in school.
