Fort Worth Independent School District
Challenge
The last three years have been extremely taxing, stressful, and sometimes traumatizing on public school employees. While it is kept out of news media, public school teacher and administrator suicide is on the rise. Our partner Challenge of Tarrant County has been tasked with managing federal Covid relief grants targeting the mental health of our public school system employees. They reached out to us to implement programs to help.
Approach
Together, Challenge and The Mindful Project decided to grant several hundred Fort Worth ISD staff unlimited and free access to The Daily Well for anywhere from 3 - 12 months at a time. This way, they could choose their length of class, focus for class, and whether they needed meditation, yoga, or a mindfulness class.
The Mindful Project also offered a live series to a smaller group. Class met in person, once weekly for an hourlong Introduction to Mindfulness class. The class series was six weeks long, and participants continue to share with administration today how impactful it was. We hope to offer this again.
Results
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Challenge shared that this was one of the most successful grant projects and partnerships they’ve done to date. We were able to track usage for each participant to report back to the federal government. We also tracked responses and feedback throughout the course of the program.
Participants learned how to manage their stress during the workday, how to take care of themselves on the weekends, and gave them real resources and tools so the traumatic stress of the current public school environment doesn't live in their body and create illness.