River City Middle Schoolers practice peer support through leadership program

POST FALLS — A hike in the woods, a deep breath, reading a favorite book.

These are just a few stress-relieving activities River City Middle School Titan Leadership Team members recommended Wednesday morning as they visited different classrooms to engage with their peers.

“Stress is a physical and emotional reaction to perceived demands or pressure,” eighth grader Anneliese Ross said as she and leadership peer Meliya Bektic spoke to students in Troy Pottenger's class.

“There’s two types of stress — we have acute stress and chronic stress," Anneliese said.

Acute stress happens over a short period and is usually related to specific situations. Chronic stress lasts over a long period and affects overall health, such as the stress that accompanies a broken bone.

"It obviously doesn’t heal instantly, so over a couple weeks or a couple months you have to deal with and overcome the challenge of having your broken arm,” Meliya said.

Every month, Titan Leadership students offer peer-to-peer lessons on concepts such as empathy and stress management. Based on curriculum of the Coeur d'Alene-based Core Project, which focuses on age-appropriate topics such as self-awareness, responsible decision making and relationship skills, the lessons promote engagement among classmates and throughout the grade levels.

“I think it’s awesome,” sixth grader Elias Seholz said. “We’re learning to relieve our stress and we get to do something fun to relieve stress too.”

Middle school is stressful for many students, Meliya said.

“Stress management is very important, especially the jump from elementary to middle school, one class to about five," Meliya said. "You need to learn how to juggle your tasks correctly or else you’ll get stressed out and behind.”

“Also, a lot of kids our age are doing sports as well as there’s a lot of kids in our school taking honors classes or doing multiple sports at a time,” Anneliese said. “Especially with these kids who came from elementary school only doing one sport and not having many advanced classes, it’s a nice way to tell them, ‘Hey, you’re not alone, all of us deal with stress’ and how to take action.”

Teachers Ryan Heasty, Janey Ortega and Dean Strawn oversee and help build the Titan Leadership and Core activities.

Heasty said he is incredibly proud of the Titan Leadership members and the work they do to engage with other kids.

“It helps the students relate better to the lesson being taught because it’s coming from one of their peers,” Heasty said.

Ortega said the program has been a great opportunity for students to network and make new friends.

"It’s been really cool to watch the older kids mentor the younger kids,” she said.

Students received bingo cards encouraging them to try different stress-reducing activities such as learning new recipes and other things they may not do without some motivation, Ortega said.

"It encourages community in the school and outside the school," she said. "It’s been really awesome. I think this program has filled a gap for us at school right now. We have a lot of kids who just need that little extra connection. This has been a way to do that, and it’s been the best thing we’ve ever tried.”

    Seventh grader Tanner Huddleston is excited to receive a stress management bingo card Wednesday morning at River City Middle School.
  

    River City Middle School sixth grader Elias Seholz gets low to the "Cha-Cha Slide" while students burn off some stress dancing Wednesday morning in Janey Ortega's class.
  

    Eighth grader and Titan Leadership Team member Anneliese Ross, left, helps lead an arm exercise while discussing how to cope with stress Wednesday morning at River City Middle School.