Kind: captions
Language: en
I'd like to think of myself as a good
student Cole McFall is a senior at Henry
M gun high in Palo Alto California a
school known for its academic rigor and
strong student performance so I do
Student Government president of the
Chinese Culture Club and I'm also big
into basketball and try to manage all
that with the studying that leads to
stress maybe it's from your parents
maybe it's from your friends maybe it's
from like your teachers pushing you is
probably really unhealthy for me you get
a very intense pressure a set of test
scores and grades that might make you a
hero in another school uh you just
wonder if you can make
it cam was his name he was like one of
my close friends he was the guy on the
basketball team that would just be
laughing all the time I like walked into
my class late somebody's said like cam
committed suicide and I was like what
like that can't be right at all I've
never cried so hard I definitely went
through the denial phase for like the
next couple days I was like
damn so
yeah one of our former students died by
Suicide and 2 months later one of our
current students died by Suicide and a
month and a half later a third student
died by
Suicide um and it was a pretty
tumultuous time on our campus since 2009
gun High School has experienced eight
suicides more than half occurred within
a single calendar year I just looked at
the situation I was like this shouldn't
be happening something has to change so
alongside Teachers Health practitioners
and administrators Cole and his fellow
students have been working to change the
culture at the school pretty much every
possible decision that I make about this
school I make through the lens of is
this going to contribute to student
well-being the academic stuff is not as
important as uh like teaching students
how to take care of themselves and how
to be happy we constantly learn about
how to fill our minds with new
information but when do we actually
learn how to empty it and make some
space right so today we're going to get
a chance to do that to reduce stress gun
high schools introduced mindfulness
training to its regular fizzed program
breathe
in out of all this terrible that
happened to our school
one good thing that happened was this
awareness of mental health and how
people are doing and just being
considerate that culture of checking in
how you doing how you doing how you
doing and then not just saying I'm okay
or I'm good but like actually caring
about like how are you actually doing
[Music]