Thriving Minds: Building Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems

For many young people, the isolation, uncertainty, and trauma of the past two years have bred anxiety and depression, with potentially long-lasting effects on their success in school and beyond. Schools must respond to this need by providing thoughtful and effective mental health supports.

Thriving Minds is here to help. Through this initiative—a partnership between the Rennie Center, the Massachusetts School Mental Health Consortium, and BRYT—we offer learning opportunities and guidance in building comprehensive mental health systems that allow schools to support all students, now and in the future.

School Mental Health Essentials PD Series

Thriving Minds is offering a series of training sessions to introduce school and district staff to the essentials of a comprehensive school mental health system. Each session will focus on a foundational component of building a mental health system—such as data, interventions, and infrastructure—all presented with a racial equity lens.

Interventions Across the Tiers
Wednesday, May 25, 3:30-5:00 pm

Additional Training Opportunities

Addressing School Avoidance
Tuesday, May 17, 3:00-4:00 pm

Leveraging All School-Based Mental Health Staff
Wednesday, May 18, 3:30-4:30 pm

Blog

Connecting Teachers and Students Across Communities: Campus Without Walls

May 05, 2022

In the early days of the pandemic, members of Open Opportunity—Massachusetts started discussing a question: how is it that in a time when all students are learning remotely, their zip codes still determine the quality of education they have access to? Why should learning be confined to the opportunities available in one school building? The group began dreaming up the idea of a Campus Without Walls, where a student in one community could take a class taught by a teacher across the city, or even across the state. In spring 2021, a pilot of Campus Without Walls was launched in Boston Public Schools. To learn more about how CWW has impacted educators, we spoke with two teachers who, despite teaching in different schools in different neighborhoods, teamed up to teacher a Feminist Theory course for 12th graders.