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Dorchester De-stress Room

"Are you stressed? Do you find yourself worrying for exams? Do you find you can't cope? Would you benefit from a space that you could use to relax or hangout? Even do homework? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not alone. Come and check out the LDSS De-stress room Wednesday at lunch."

Hi, my name is Megan and I am a grade 12 student at Lord Dorchester in Dorchester ON. In September I was brainstorming ideas with our school's Healthy Schools committee when my friend, Erin and I decided we wanted to focus on teen stress and mental health awareness. We had heard of another school in our board who created a student lounge and had great success. We decided that we could build on that idea. We decided that students of all ages would benefit from using a space to relax and chill out especially during stressful times. Our hope is to have the room open throughout the exam period so that students can relax or study in a quiet environment. To start our program we decided to have a sample, pilot day. On November 10, 2010 we had our first de-stress room.

The de-stress room is currently in our Academic Support Room (ASR) at lunch on Wednesdays. However, the room is a small classroom that is used by student success on Wednesdays too so we have to move our supplies. Our Hope is to have a permanent space where we can decorate and keep our supplies. In our room we have various components. We have colouring sheets, computers for homework, resources, bean bag chairs borrowed from the library, gym mats and relaxing music. The space is a quiet, non-judgemental space where students can relax, nap, use one of our stations or do homework. We have a volunteer teacher to supervise and to help students with homework questions.

After the opening day some may consider us to be unsuccessful because unfortunately, we only had a handful of people come and check it out. But I think that although that was not the numbers we were hoping for, it was still success because we helped those few people. I think that the main reason people did not come was because people did not know about. I think that as we get it up in running we can expect more people to come and to pass the message along. We hope to create a video announcement to promote it for our next session.

Next steps, our next step is to get feedback about stress and improving the room. We are looking in to a permanent space to use and we would like to include more resources as well as information about mental health and stress. Stress happens to everyone and although many of us can handle stress, we still need down time to help our bodies and mind.

Written by: Megan Blanchette