Over the summer, Southwest Local Schools made several changes to help support the mental health of students. These changes included hiring new staff and adding a new, state-mandated program called Satchel Pulse. Satchel Pulse meets the social and emotional learning standards of the state.
The high school and junior school hired three new mental health support staff, one at the high school and two at the junior school. These new staff will help better meet the mental health needs of students 6-12 and work on social-emotional skills along with self-management.
Our new high school Wellness Coordinator is Sandy Kauffman. Mrs. Kauffman has a different background than the other two staff hired for the junior high as they have counseling experience and she does not. She worked at childrens for 15 years providing psychosocial emotional care to patients and families. After Childrens’ she worked in a non-profit organization that assisted schools in suicide prevention. She was hired for the high school to be a wellness coordinator providing emotional support for students. If students need more support than what she can provide, she can help them find the help they need with a referral to some of our other services.
In addition to supporting individual students, she also supports the student body as a whole through helping with the implementation of a new program called Satchel Pulse. Satchel Pulse provides emotional and social help by identifying student strengths and weakness in five areas. School staff can then use this general information to know how the student body is doing, and how the staff can better support them. The five areas it tracks are self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, social awareness, and responsible decision making.
When asked why she thinks Satchel Pulse is important to have at our school, Kauffman answered: “I don’t think students are ever going to succeed academically if they aren’t taken care of socially and emotionally.”
If you would like to know more about the program or about health and wellness in general the program also has new Facebook and Instagram pages: Wildcat Wellness and @swlsd_wildcat_wellness.
