Today we celebrated International Men's Day at Ponteland High.
The focus of the session was men's mental health.
During period 1, which was an RSHE session, all Yr12 students watched a BBC documentary called 'Roman Kemp: Our Silent Emergency'. The documentary focused on male suicide and wider mental health issues, and encouraged males to seek help if they need to. Afterwards, all male Year 12 students were invited down to the dining street for an informal conversation with a male member of staff. The aim was to highlight everyday role models and encourage as much open communication as students were willing to give.
The atmosphere was supportive overall and it was fantastic to see over 70 male staff and students having open conversations about the challenges of being a man and we hope it proved a beneficial and thought provoking session.
We also had two guest speakers who came and spoke with some of our Yr10 students. Grant Henderson talked about 'The positive value of men' and Ben Oliver led a workshop about 'Healthy Masculinity'. Students had group discussions and the overall feedback has been very positive.
