PSS’ Project HALIGI Aware welcomes summer interns

Project HALIGI AWARE/PSS Mental Health Program welcomed 23 new mental health interns from Saipan, Tinian, and Rota at Cha Cha Ocean View Middle School from June 27 to June 30.

The summer interns were introduced to the PSS Mental Health Program during this four-day onboarding session. These mental health interns were responsible for supporting summer schools on all three islands.

Throughout the summer months, these interns were to provide mental health support to promote positive social, emotional, and behavioral skills, and the overall wellness for students enrolled in summer school programs.

The 23 interns were taught how to be effective in their roles, about social-emotional processes, mental health terminologies, strategies to support and deal with real-life situations in the classroom, and paths of solutions in the day-to-day work life. The interns were also guided through their daily routines on the job, including social emotional learning lesson plans and presentations.

Walter Mendez, the Local Education Agency Community Project manager for Saipan, led the Nearpod Walkthrough to introduce an online platform that interns used to promote SEL in the classroom. The interns were taught how to launch presentations and how to use their devices to engage student participation.

Vannah Hocog, behavioral specialist for Rota, shared a presentation on SEL Competencies, which was broken down into self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, social awareness, and relationship skills. These five types of competencies will enable the interns to communicate to students how they can integrate these skills with real-life situations.

“We are beyond excited to share these opportunities to our student interns,” said mental health specialist Jericho Tobias. “After all that our students in the CNMI have endured throughout the past six years, these conversations are becoming more important for students so that they are aware of the support available to them.”

Mendez is optimistic about the “personal growth each of the interns will experience working with and assisting the students. As educators, we understand that the highest level of learning is teaching. Giving these young adults this experience allows them to learn at the highest level as facilitators and ambassadors of mental wellness.”

Throughout the four-week program, PSS Mental Health and its new summer interns have presented multiple social-emotional lesson sessions to different classrooms within the elementary, middle and high schools. They were also able to integrate multimedia with the use of the presentation tool, Nearpod, into their lessons to engage students with the use of technology. (PR)