Mental and Emotional Health (grade 7)
1. Fiction book:
Some Kind of Happiness by Claire Legrand, published May 17, 2016 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

• General Information:
• This book is about a girl who has parents dealing with a struggling marriage and has depression herself. She goes to her grandparents for the summer and develops this fantasy world in her notebook that becomes all too real to her and her cousin. The author does a great job showing how someone with mental/emotional health issues copes with it and maybe some possible ways to handle it. Overall, this book could be a great Segway into opening conversation about mental/emotional health.

• This selection can be integrated into writing which is very helpful for expressing feelings, thoughts, and emotions. Middle schoolers are going through a lot during those years of their lives, mental and emotional health can be heavy stuff and it is most certainly not something that should be avoided. By integrating it into a writing topic/project we can open the door to conversations about it and how to deal with it.
• An excerpt from the book:
“HE IS COMING.

She is coming.

It was the beginning of summer. There were soft breezes in the air, and the Everwood was using them to speak.

The ancient guardians used spells and charms to weave a golden cage around the secret at the heart of the Everwood.

But still the secret grew and darkened, deep underground. It reached for the roots of the great Everwood trees like poison. Someday it would rise. Someday, soon, it would escape.

But those who lived in the Everwood—the witches and the goblins, the barrows and the fairies and the wood spirits—knew nothing of this. They turned their faces to the trees and listened, as they did every day.

Today the message was different.

She is coming, whistled the Everwood winds.

She is coming, rustled the Everwood leaves.

“Who?” the creatures of the forest asked. “Who is coming?”

The little orphan girl, groaned the trees. She carries a great sadness inside her. We must put our hope in her nevertheless.

And the guardians stood at the edge of the wood and gazed into the sun, waiting.”

• Core Integration:
• Obviously reading a book means it would be integrated with reading/literature. I would do a class read aloud/book club kind of project. The whole class would read the book together, sometimes out loud in class and other times as homework. Group discussions would follow each section of reading allowing them to dive deeper into the book and its meaning/purpose. At the end I would also have them express (through a poster or a paper or video) what they learned from the book and how it might apply to their own lives.

• Standards:
• NHES 2: Students will analyze the influence of family, peers, culture, media, technology, and other factors on health behaviors.
• RL.7.2 – Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

2. Nonfiction book:
(Don’t) Call Me Crazy by Kelly Jensen, published October 2, 2018 by Algonquin Young Readers

• General Information:
• This book was designed to open the conversation of mental health. People do not talk about mental health nearly enough resulting in a lack of educated humans about something everyone deals with at some point in their life. The book is composed of thirty-three different people who express, in their own way, what mental health is to them, their own experiences, why it’s not talked about, and how to get help with mental health. Overall, one part of it or another should relate to any reader of this book based on the diversity of authors, topics, and ways the ideas are expressed.

• Excerpt:
“I am not, however, depression. Depression does not define me. If I were to make a list of all the words I, or others, might use to describe me, it might include: “weird,” “inconsiderate,” “quiet,” “lonely,” “goofy,” “kind,” “awkward,” “focused,” and “depressed.” But those are simply different facets of the person people see when they see me. Depending on the time of day or whether I’ve had enough coffee or am on a deadline, a hundred people might walk away with an entirely different set of words they’d use to describe me. And while all those words might be useful for cataloging my behavior in one given circumstance, they would not and could not define me completely. Because we define words, not people.”

• Core Integration:
• Since this book is meant to start the conversation about mental health, that’s exactly what my core integration assignment would be aimed at. I would assign the book to all my students where they would choose one author that they feel similar to or they connected the most with and write a speech about what their piece meant to them. They would include what the next step in the mental health conversation would be whether that is finding help, the right resources, or even steps to take to help their own mental health. This assignment does not require them to read the whole book, but it does require them to be familiar with all of the readings which is an added bonus to the assignment along with improving in their speech skills.

• Standards:
• NHES 3: Students will demonstrate the ability to access valid information, products, and services to enhance health.
• SL.7.6 – Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.
–