Last updated: Jan 31, 2023

Looking to infuse wellness into your classroom, school, or school authority all year long? Watch this page for new resources, announcements, and tips for health-related theme days. We've got you covered!

Announcements:

  • Get Help Here
  • Get inspired! Stories of school health in action
  • Introducing the new AHS program, e-Mental Health for Youth and Young Adults (eMH)
  • Calling all grade 4, 5, and 6 teachers: Try our new mental health literacy resource!

New resources:

  • Help teens quit smoking or vaping — the way they want!
  • Pride guide 2022: Youth strategies for tackling gender-based violence in our schools

Mark your calendar

Announcements

Get Help Here

Mental health is an important part of everyone’s well-being. The Government of Canada is launching Get Help Here, a campaign to raise awareness that free, credible mental health resources are available anytime, from anywhere.

Support your students and their families by helping them learn about the campaign and its tools and resources. For example:

 

Get inspired! Stories of school health in action

New for 2023, we're sharing stories of school health in action across Alberta classrooms, schools, and school authorities. Visit our get inspired section to learn what others have done and spark ideas. 

Our first five stories cover a variety of topics, like:

  • Celebrating families
  • Mindfulness in the classroom
  • Student voice for mental health

Check back often! We'll add more stories in the coming weeks.

 

Introducing the new AHS program, e-Mental Health for Youth and Young Adults (eMH)

e-Mental Health for Youth and Young Adults (eMH) is a new digital initiative from AHS. We invite mental health providers in high schools across the province to join us pilot-testing this innovative approach to enhancing mental health care.

The eMH web platform empowers youth to:

  • Check-in through mental health questionnaires
  • Explore apps and e-tools between sessions
  • See and track their progress over time
  • Access crisis resources when needed

AHS is evaluating the implementation and impact of eMH in improving mental health care in young people (15-24 years old). If you’re a mental health professional based in an Alberta high school, we encourage you to learn more about how you can take part in the pilot. Our eMH project team will support you with service-mapping and co-design facilitation, training and ongoing support in using the eMH platform, and opportunities to inform the eMH platform design and analytics.

To get involved, email emh@ahs.ca to connect with a member of our team. You can also:

   

Calling all grade 4, 5, and 6 teachers: Try our new mental health literacy resource! 

The AHS Mental Health Literacy team—the folks behind mentalhealthliteracy.org—are hard at work on a new mental health literacy resource for Alberta students in grades 4, 5, and 6. They’re collaborating with educators, youth, and mental health experts to design tools to improve elementary students’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours around mental health and wellbeing.

Throughout the 2022/23 school year, the team will be connecting with teachers in grades 4, 5, or 6 (or grades 4/5 or 5/6) who’d like to try the resource in their classrooms and give feedback on how it’s working.

Interested? Check out the Elementary Mental Health Literacy Resource (EMHLR): Alberta-wide research in schools poster for details, or email mhliterate@gmail.com.

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New resources

Help teens quit smoking or vaping - the way they want!

Quash is a new smoking and vaping cessation program for teens and young adults (age 14-30) that makes it easy to build a custom plan for quitting. Funded by Health Canada and co-designed by youth, Quash is available in both English and French.

Through a free mobile app and web resources, Quash helps young people learn the dangers of smoking, and coaches them through behaviour change. They can track their successes and setbacks, longest quit streaks, and how much money they’ve saved. They can access tools and activities to help them through the quit process, including help lines.

  • If you know a young person who is looking for support to quit smoking or vaping, encourage them to get Quash on the App Store or Google Play.
  • To learn more about how it works and what adult allies can do, go to quashapp.com.

Pride guide 2022: Youth strategies for tackling gender-based violence in our schools

Pride guide 2022 is a collection of by-youth strategies for handling gender-based violence in Canadian schools. Created by students from coast-to-coast (and supported by the Public Health Agency of Canada and The Centre for Global Education), this publication explores the lived experiences of 2SLGBTQ+ youth with gender-based violence in schools. It offers real-life ideas to grow and strengthen school communities, with practical advice on:

  • Inclusive language
  • School architecture
  • Creating and running successful GSAs
  • Practices for teachers and administrators
  • 2SLGBTQ+ inclusive teaching and learning

Spend some time with Pride guide 2022: Youth strategies for tackling gender-based violence in our schools. You'll be glad you did. 

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Mark your calendar 

Taking part in health-related days, weeks, or month-long events is a great way to bring your school community together. These events can raise awareness of health topics and kick-start important conversations around wellness at school.

Be sure to connect health-related events back to the priorities, goals, and action plans in place in your school or school authority. Use the comprehensive school health framework to guide activities that are coordinated, meaningful, and likely to last.

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