For PTA Leaders

For PTA Leaders

Healthy Minds Icon

For PTA Leaders: Healthy Minds

Before diving into this Healthy Minds work, keep in mind that your PTA has the awesome opportunity to play an important role in:

Helping families understand that for children to thrive both in the classroom and in life, they must be healthy not just physically, but mentally and emotionally too.
Connecting what is happening in families’ homes to what is happening within the school building.
Supporting school leadership in providing relevant school-based mental health supports and services to families and teaching positive social and emotional skills to kids.
Ensuring that mental health supports are available and accessible to all students and recognize the uniqueness of each child.

Healthy Minds Toolkit for PTA Leaders

So what does implementing this PTA Healthy Minds Program look like?

Your PTA should use these resources below to 1) Listen to and Learn from Your School Community, 2) Partner with your School Administration, and 3) Share useful resources and information with families, and 4) Build a Healthy Minds program that will best fit the needs of your community by utilizing National PTA’s program materials to create learning and engagement opportunities for families at your school.

Guide to Running the PTA Healthy Minds Program — check out this short guide to running the PTA Healthy Minds program that provides tips to get you started in your program planning and examples of how other PTAs have implemented Healthy Minds programming in their school communities.

Listen Partner Share Build

Listen to and Learn from Your School Community

Before you start, take time to listen and learn about the mental health needs of your school community through:

Asking to meet with your school administration, teachers, and school counselors to learn about what the school is already doing and what the challenges are.
Gathering feedback from parents directly through a school-wide survey or a parent focus group(s).

This information will help you determine the needs of your school and if there are any specific topics your Healthy Minds program may need to address.

Resources

These resources can help your PTA do this.

Partner with Your School Leadership

A key partner for you is your school’s leadership and staff. Start planning your program by meeting with them to:

Share the goals of the PTA Healthy Minds program.
Find out what the school is already offering to support students' mental health and build students’ social and emotional skills.
Ask them to share existing school or district data on student mental health to build parents’ understanding of the needs of their students.
Brainstorm ideas for PTA’s Healthy Minds program in partnership with school leadership.

Resources

Build Your Healthy Minds Program

The PTA Healthy Minds Program contains two primary elements: 1) Distributing National PTA's family resources and tools; and 2) Hosting the PTA Healthy Minds Education Series. The rest of the program is up to you and your PTA! You can be creative and add additional sessions, strategies and resources based on your community’s needs.

The PTA Healthy Minds Education Series creates opportunities for families to learn together and discuss important Healthy Minds topics as a group. This helps to build community and show everyone that they’re not alone. There’s flexibility in how you offer this programming so it can best meet the needs of your community. You can…

Host an In-Person or At-Home “PTA Healthy Minds Session” in Real-Time. This lets everyone participate and interact together. All of the materials you’ll need are below.
Or, if it better meets the needs of your community, you can also give families a Self-Paced option where they can watch these videos which cover similar (but shortened) content from the PTA Healthy Minds Sessions.

The PTA Healthy Minds Education Series includes the three sessions outlined below (more to come in 2023!):

PTA Healthy Minds 101

In-Person and At-Home Real-Time Models
At-Home Self-Paced Model
Share these handouts with families as well.

PTA Healthy Minds: Building Social and Emotional Skills at Home

In-Person and At-Home Real-Time Models
- Elementary School Slide Deck
- Middle School Slide Deck
- High School Slide Deck
  - The Facilitator's notes can be found in the note section of the PowerPoint.
- Planning Guide
Training Videos for Facilitators
At-Home Self-Paced Model

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Share these handouts with families as well.

PTA Healthy Minds: Building Resilience

In-Person and At-Home Real-Time Models
At-Home Self-Paced Model

Share these handouts with families as well.

Additional Opportunities

As a PTA leader, you are also well-positioned to help your school become part of the Grief-Sensitive Schools Initiative (GSSI), which seeks to better equip teachers to care for grieving students by introducing GrievingStudents.org and other valuable grief resources to local schools at no cost. You will already be doing some of this work by participating in the PTA Healthy Minds program, so why not look into taking it a step further? Go here to learn more about the process of becoming a Grief-Sensitive School. Have questions? Email nylfoundation@newyorklife.com.