Friday Headlines
the weekly newsletter from EHS
The Peer Education Project
29 April 2022
During the second half of the Spring Term, four teams of Sixth Form students took on the role of Peer Educators, delivering lessons on mental health, self-care and safeguarding to Year 7 pupils. A Peer Educator is a student who has been trained within the Peer Education Project, a programme aiming to support older students in teaching their peers, particularly younger members of our school community, about mental health. The team of Sixth Form students underwent half a term of intensive training before delivering to their peers, as part of their role as pastoral mentors within the school.
The girls worked with Year 7 students on topics such as the importance of stress relief, the meaning of mental health and the effect of stress on our body both mentally and physiologically. As a group of pastoral leaders within the school, we were keen to share our resources with the younger students post- pandemic. The mental health of all students is our priority, and we believe that the Peer Education Project brings us one step closer to achieving our aim to support our peers mentally.
Every lesson began and ended with a mindfulness exercise. Sessions took an interactive approach, immersing the students in real life issues, and working together to help one another overcome these challenges. A typical session used the ‘stress bucket’ experiment, where we used the analogy of a bucket overflowing to represent persistent stress with no self-care, and a bucket with small holes to represent the water never overflowing, as a symbol of the importance of why we need small elements of self-care to support out mental health.
Our last session focused on students valuing the importance of relationships with people around them who can support them with their mental health. We used a piece of wool to connect the entire class together in some way as a result of having something in common, based on questions such as, ‘who enjoys drawing?’, ‘whose favourite sport is hockey?’ and many more.
It has been an honour for the Sixth Form to have worked with the younger students, and we have felt very privileged to learn from the students themselves about the changes they wish to see with the future of mental health, the lessons they have learnt and how confident they now feel with understanding their own personal well-being as well as those around them. We believe the Peer Education Project has been a great success for all, and we look forward to continuing this project within our community.
Maryam and Jess
The Peer Education Programme
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