HULL—Mental Health Awareness Month is more than a calendar notification at Boyden-Hull Junior/Senior High School in Hull.

Counselor Emily Miranda will leave the district at the end of the school year, moving to Pella with her family. She hopes her legacy, however, will live on every May.

“Last year, I knew about May being Mental Health Awareness Month, and I tried to do some little things, but it didn’t feel like enough. So, I wanted to make it a little bit more. This year, I also started a student group for a mental health committee,” Miranda said. “I figured I had that group, and if they wanted to put stuff together and plan things — and they were interested — so we just came up with some activities and things to fill the month. So, that’s where it stems from.”

Events began Wednesday, May 1, when Miranda and the newly-founded Student Mental Health Committee screened a student version of the film “What I Wish My Parents Knew” during two student assemblies. The documentary shows what anxiety and depression looks like in many grade school students. The seventh- through eighth-grade and ninth- through 12th-grade assemblies ended with time for students to write their own story and share them with a teacher if they so desired.

“I feel like that was a really good kickoff,” Miranda said. “Kids had an opportunity to share, or at least write down for themselves, their own story or something they experienced that was hard to kind of realize that we all go through stuff. Even I have gone through stuff, you know, to open their eyes to that.”

Throughout the month of May, Miranda has held voluntary Lunch & Learns over the lunch hour when students discuss a certain topic relating to mental health or unique types of support that are available. One of those examples was art therapy.

“That’s been fun, just kind of digging in a little bit more for those that want to go deeper,” Miranda said.

Homeroom slots also have contributed time toward recognizing the prevalence of mental health among a younger generation. The mental health committee created a variety of activities for classrooms to work through like writing encouraging anonymous notes to put in their peers’ lockers, coloring pages, trivia days and a “Chalk the Walk” activity where students draw uplifting pictures and messages on the sidewalk.

Miranda said one of the key things to making mental health activities exciting for high school students is to “shake things up” out of their regular routine.

Much of that shaking up she attributes to her Student Mental Health Committee made up of 19 seventh- through 12th-grade students who have planned various activities, hung posters, modeled note-giving and started their own Instagram account @bh__supportgroup.

Using social media, Boyden-Hull students have shared positive messages and tips to better communal and personal mental health as well as lessened a culture of stigma by sharing their own stories online.

“These are the people that are safe people who have a passion for mental health. So, that’s been kind of cool to walk through with them, figuring out how to use social media to reach their peers in that way,” Miranda said.

As May comes to a close, meaning not only the end of Mental Health Awareness Month but also the end of a chapter of Miranda’s role at Boyden-Hull, she hopes the culture she has implemented over time will stick. Most of all, she hopes students do not feel like they go through challenging things alone.

“With the conversations I have with kids one-on-one, it’s obvious to me because of my role that kids struggle; that most kids at least go through something difficult in their life, especially at the high school age,” she said. “I think a lot of kids feel like they’re alone in experiencing that and that they’re the only people that are going through hard times. I just want people to realize that they’re not alone and that they can rely on each other and that they can be there for people who are around them.

“Be mindful of what you say and what the people around you have experienced. You don’t know what other people have experienced in their own lives and the people around them. So, be sensitive but also supportive of the people around you.”