By Elora Brow
Online Opinion Editor
Over the past two years, Mira Costa has begun to take serious action toward reducing the amount of student stress. Although the implementation of the program has been delayed, the plan is very pragmatic and will serve to benefit students and teachers greatly when the campus is properly adjusted.
This year, in order to reduce stress even further than in previous years, Costa has implemented a Social and Emotional Wellness Committee, enhanced teacher cohesion through a more unified department curriculum and developed a schedule in which each department has specific days to assign major tests and projects. All teachers are required to keep Canvas updated with school assignments for their specific classes.
Costa’s stress plan and regulations are a beneficial adjustment for the school, as long as teachers consistently practice them. Many students are constantly swamped with tests and homework on a day-to-day basis, so the school’s efforts to reduce that amount of daily testing and assignments are helpful in reducing stress, licensed family and marriage therapist Janie Mcglasson said.
MBEF shares their views on Social-Emotional Health at Costa.
As a part of the stress initiative, Costa created a Wellness Committee consisting of faculty, staff, students and parents within the past year to address the topic of unhealthy stress levels amongst students, English Department Co-Chair and Stress Committee member Jonathan Westerberg said. Developing this committee is a great first step as multiple perspectives across the district will be heard, ideally increasing the likeliness of the best possible solution to deal with student stress.
Another part of the stress plan indicated that teachers are communicating more so that their tests and assignments do not dramatically vary, Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale said. Increasing communication among teachers in each department and their students is very beneficial because it will prevent certain students from feeling as stressed due to the fact that they received a “more difficult” teacher.
According to a survey of 20 Costa teachers, 100% of the respondents have been trying their absolute best to follow the new stress schedule and guidelines, thus showing that teachers are fully committed to reducing stress across campus.
However, many teachers stated that even when they attempt to follow the guidelines, they are not always successful due to their own course year-long schedule. The lack of a properly implemented plan is disadvantageous to Costa students because it decreases consistency among teachers and expectations of students across different classrooms.
In addition, according to a survey of 200 Costa students, 75% of respondents noticed that at least one of their teachers had not fully implemented the new schedule. The lack of teacher follow-through may be slowing the process; however, students should not judge teachers on their performance thus far due to the fact that it has only been implemented for seven weeks.
According to Editorial Projects in Education, a nonprofit publisher on educational news and insight, when school administrators implement a new program, there will always be an implementation dip of some kind, meaning that the initial situation will always get worse before getting better. Therefore, it is to be expected that teachers and students will experience difficulty with the program when it is first introduced.
Costa’s stress plan has made clear efforts to reduce student stress through department schedule stacking, an increase in teacher communication and the use of Canvas. Although students are upset due to the lack of follow-through amongst many of their teachers in regards to the department schedule coordination, the stress plan was recently implemented so it can only improve from this point forward.
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