SANDY, Utah — In Canyons School District, there's a center that provides support to students and families as they navigate many different emotions and situations. It's called the Canyons Family Center and it's based out of Mt. Jordan Middle School. This support comes in the form of a variety of different classes for different age groups and even for just parents.
The district offers classes for emotional intelligence, navigating your parents divorce, anxiety, depression, grief, anger management, self esteem and more. They even offer parenting classes for parents who have a child with anxiety or ADHD. This year, they're offering a course for students and their families about internet safety. Each course is offered at no cost to Canyons families.
"I think every kid should learn healthy coping skills and their emotions and how to regulate that," Susan Leete, one of the teachers in the program and a counselor in the district, said.
The classes are grouped by certain age groups so Leete teaches emotional intelligence for kindergartner through second graders. They're held on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the evening at Mt. Jordan Middle School.
"The parents will come back and tell us like 'You know what we had a big meltdown last night so we pulled out the paper from your class and we chose which coping skill to use and it really helped them regulate their emotions'," she said. "So it’s really cool to hear from parents about how they are using these skills at home.”
Ellie Bechard, the director of the center, said it's always important to support the mental health of students and families, but recent data shows there's some good news.
“As a district, anxiety and depression is actually gettin better, despite social media and despite the norms around what we’re hearing," Bechard said. "We still show that there is a need for students with severe mental health but over all students are reporting less depression and suicidal ideation in the last two years that this was administered.”
The classes begin the week of September 7th and will continue throughout the year. To register for these classes, you can visit their website here.
