By Naomi Tsuang
Online News Editor
Costa’s Social and Emotional Wellness Committee discussed the root causes and effects of stress for Costa students with Challenge Success coach Paul Franz at its meeting on Monday.
Costa created the SEW Committee, consisting of students, parents and Costa staff, in 2015 in order to assess the school climate at Mira Costa and to identify the problems and root causes that contribute to student stress. Since the committee was created, it has worked with Challenge Success, a research organization based out of Stanford University that aims to create a more balanced and academically fulfilling life for students.
“We want to come up with some comprehensive [objectives] that we can get done this year,” Franz said. “It seems to me that a lot of concrete things that were planned have happened. We’re make progress in these different areas and we need to continue to do that.”
Photos: The SEW committee analyzes the causes and effects of stress on students
One of the SEW committee’s objectives is to reduce student stress and the committee created a “stress tree” last year that the committee felt contained the root causes of stress and the symptoms or branches of that stress.
“We [took] a step back to the beginning of this committee and the beginning of the stress tree to what we saw,” Franz said at the meeting. “We are making progress in many different areas and now we need to start putting together the shared vision [of this committee].”
The root causes of stress that the SEW committee generated when it was first created included a lack of focus on character, a lack of interactive classes, parent pressure, time consuming extracurriculars and perfectionism. The committee also generated cheating, substance abuse issues, a lack of connection between teachers and students, lack of sleep and an environment of entitlement as symptoms of stress.
“All of these things are important, but [what] I think of the root [is that] if you get rid of college admissions and that whole idea, your overscheduling begins to disappear, and so many other things begin to disappear,” co-chair of the English Department and SEW committee member Jonathan Westerberg said. “But, I feel that college admissions as a root [cause of stress] is not something that we as a campus have sole control over.”
Franz then asked committee members at the meeting on Monday to star the two root causes of stress and two symptoms of stress out of the total list that they feel are the most pressing issues at Costa. The committee felt that overscheduling and college admissions are the two main root causes of stress and a focus on grades and peer competition are the main two symptoms of stress.
“A focus on grades is a behavior that is common across every Challenge Success school that I have worked with,” Franz said. “This symptom is there at every school. It’s a bigger cultural thing and it is happening all over the country.”
Franz then asked committee members to look at the symptoms and causes of stress and create three sentences starting with “Success is _____ because ______.” Advanced Placement Biology teacher and committee member Jessica Bledsoe felt that success is students feeling open to experiment because achievement is not based on course selection. Costa counselor Keshia Fields stated that success is students focusing on finding their passion because they know that they don’t need to find their specialization in high school to get into a good college.
“In terms of where we are moving [to] next, it looks like scheduling is something that we want to keep looking at doing some of our work because we feel that it will address a lot of the symptoms of stress,” Franz said.
Link: Learn more about the Social and Emotional Wellness Committee
MBUSD Board President Jennifer Cochran said that the committee will continue to utilize the stress tree at future meetings to further expand on its plans to reduce stress at Costa. In addition, the committee will analyze students’ perspectives on aspects such as homework, extracurricular activities and stress from the Challenge Success survey results that students took on Feb. 1 at its next meeting on April 3.
“The survey results [will be] rich and complex, and can provide a lot of insight, but may also muddle our picture [for this committee],” Franz said. “We want to codify some of it so that moving forward to next year and beyond we can make this a sustainable long-term process.”
Leave a Reply