In the world of social media where superficial snapshots of people’s lives form the foundation of what we experience day to day, we need tools that disrupt this trend while simultaneously embrace the technology that is alluring to to young people.
THIS IS ME is a unique social and emotional learning program powered by youths’ stories. With one in five youth struggling with a mental health challenge and rates of overdose, suicidal thinking, attempts, and deaths continuing to rise, we must find ways to provide robust solutions to alter these trajectories. COVID and racial injustice has created even more challenges for youth. To varying degrees, schools are attempting to offer prevention programming but offering something the students want to do is essential.
To reach students isolated during the lock-downs and Black Lives Matter protests, THIS IS ME, began at the University of Washington, in partnership with The Human Arc. In 2020-2021, nearly 100 students across 14 WA high schools and five foreign countries(UK, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Australia), were served virtually, in an after school program that promoted student reflection, video creation, and voice. After this initial pilot, the WA State Department of Health, the Mark Torrance Foundation and the Matt Adler Fund, provided funding to build program assets: enhancements to the program’s web-based app, a brand website and a complementary curriculum completed in 2021 for a relaunch of the program in 2022.
The foundation of THIS IS ME is a web-based app. A peer interviewer who is pre-recorded (students can choose from one of four diverse interviewers), asks 27 key life questions related to self, their community, and the world around them. The app produces privacy-protected, video journal entries for students. They can use these ‘time capsules’ for reflection in their future. Key word technology picks up words of concern in students’ videos such as, “kill”, “suicide”, “harm”, “shoot” etc. As a one-of-a-kind preventative measure among social-emotional learning(SEL) programs, these flag words are reviewed by THIS IS ME staff and any concerns are shared with a point person at the school for follow-up as needed.
If they wish, students can use a verbal journal entry to create a short thematic film about themselves to share with other students in a cross-school THIS IS ME Film Festival produced by teens. A complementary curriculum for teachers/ school counselors grounded in students’ responses to the key life questions and theory around the prevention of youth suicide is available for teacher/ counselor use.
Evidence for THIS IS ME as an SEL program is being collected in 2022. Demand for the program from middle and high schools is high as THIS IS ME offers an engaging means to reflect and connect in a time of growing isolation and uncertainty.