Our mission: To support a school environment that nurtures integrity, academic engagement, connectedness and well being.

 
 
 
 

How do I get involved in SOS?

Anyone can be involved in the SOS process.  Our team is broad and includes strong supporters of SOS intervention programs, skeptics about the process, and members who are simply curious and want to be involved.  Come to an SOS event and speak your mind.  All our events (except for the “Stanford Student Experiences Survey” results) involve cross stakeholder groups of students, teachers, administration and staff, and parents.  Next year, SOS events will be held on different nights of the week, and some will be held during the day and on weekends so that we can increase availability to our highly scheduled community.  The intervention process is very broad involving issues in health and wellness, integrity, academic engagement and connectedness.  There is room in this process for everyone, including you.

When are the next meetings?

Our leadership meetings are on the first or second Thursday afternoon of the month, depending on the month, check the website for details.  Our final cross stakeholder outreach event for the year is Health and Wellness, and will be held during Stress Awareness month. 

Mission: SOS is a data based intervention program firmly based in the expectations and experiences of the Mission community.  During April, several feedback events will be held to share some of that data, the results and trends found in the analysis of the Stanford Student Experiences Survey.  Around 900 students gave feedback in this survey and the analysis is being done by teams at Lewis and Clarke and Stanford University.  These events will be held in separate stakeholder groups at convenient times for that group.  During those meetings there will also be opportunities to look at the trends and opinions expressed on the Teacher and Parent Surveys. 

Will lowering stress at Mission lower our school performance?

It is not the goal of Mission: SOS to lower the achievement levels of Mission students.  The colleges and Universities we have been working with when setting up this program, have expressed a profound appreciation of our efforts.  Distress is a costly and destructive trend growing on many University and College campuses and in companies around the world and something institutions around the world are now addressing.  Top companies like Genentech and Cisco foster interventions to lower distress in the company environment and promote achievement.  Universities and Colleges are doing the same.  Distress happens even at the elementary level and affects young minds far more profoundly than adults.  Mission is not a way station for college, but a school designed to educate young adults; learning to make individual healthy choices and promote a life in balance is a valuable education for every human being.

Isn’t stress normal?

Stress is normal and many would say necessary, but chronic distress is not normal and is destructive over time to both health and achievement.  There is anecdotal evidence and data from the student survey that points to the existence of high levels of academic distress within the Mission San Jose High School community.  It is the effects of chronic distress on individuals at MSJHS, that Mission: SOS would like to lower. 

Can we really change at Mission?

It’s been said that institutional change reaps results over 2 – 5 years, so yes, Mission can change in baby steps over time.  Today’s SOS leadership may not see the benefits of the work they do at Mission, although younger members of the community may reap the benefits of the work put in today.  Careful change and timely assessment of interventions using a well thought out rubric will increase the effectiveness of the change process.  Data based solutions are site based and, we hope, well planned and managed over time.

Individual change occurs in a single “lightbulb” moment.  What a speaker says, the anecdote they tell, a story offered by the student in the row behind you at an event, an incredible passage read in a book or article that you picked up; each of these moments has the potential to profoundly affect your life.  Some of the best support and learning opportunities an individual can have is through a process like this one.  But like any great learning opportunity, it’s only worth what we put into it; we have the opportunity to change, but it’s just that, an opportunity not a certainty.

 

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