This is a guest post from Scott Eskro, Media Specialist at Elk River High School. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program. This program was only available during the FY21 school year.

In the 2020 – 2021 school year, Elk River High School had a student population of around 1500. Like all schools, that number fluctuated in terms of students in school and students in distant learning situations.

But no matter where the students were, everyone was dealing with the stress and strain of living in a pandemic. Some believe we are on the verge of a social emotional crisis which further impacts the mental health of teens. The pandemic has exacerbated this issue and every school in the country has seen a huge impact on the mental health of their student population.

So we were looking to add contemporary fiction and memoirs that deal with the topic of mental health.

In the classrooms, English teachers have projects where students read contemporary fiction and memoirs. Students examine what the author is trying to address and/or affirm about a problem or issue in society. What issues, concerns or struggles do the characters face? How does the author address the issue and are the characters successful at tackling the issue?

We already had some books on a variety of contemporary issues. However, we were lacking books on the issue of mental illness and were hoping to add books in that area. 

Mental health is an extensive field. We were trying to improve our collection in two areas in particular.

We were looking to add books that look at the role gender plays in mental illness – examining the role that gender identity has on mental health. We were also hoping to buy memoirs and books on the topic of PTSD. Students are very interested in that topic and we have a significant portion of our student population that join the military. 

With this grant from CMLE, we were able to buy over 80 books dealing with a variety of mental health issues. Thank you CMLE for helping our students learn and tackle these issues through literature.

We will use three sets of data to examine success. First, we will look at checkout data on the books. Second, we will be giving the students a Google Form to fill out, gathering their thoughts about the book, and their understanding of the mental health issue. Third, the teacher will be examining the papers the students write.

Thank you once again, CMLE for helping us support our students and community through this grant.