Brody Gardner (left) and Mia Wiederspohn on Tuesday tend to the plants that BASE students set up in the high school hallways to help improve the looks of the school and the mood of students and staff.
BASE students Ashlee Olson (left) and Jade Balansag wait for hungry high schoolers at the group's breakfast snack bar Tuesday.
A self-organized group of Wrangell high school and middle school students decided someone had to step up and try to make life better in the schools, and it might as well be them.
"We want students to be motivated and feel supported," said senior Jade Balansag, one of about 10 high school students in BASE - Building a Supportive Environment. "We really want to reach out to the community for support for the schools."
The year-old group's mission is to improve the schools aesthetically, socially and academically, Balansag said.
It's all connected, said senior Jacob Dow, who has spent his entire school life in Wrangell. "Student mental health was suffering even before the pandemic," he said. "I noticed that no one was doing anything."
The students got together and started looking for what they could do to help. Hanging artwork in the halls and putting plants around the school building are visible signs of their effort.
Dow said he had done research into mental health and learned that surroundings can make a big difference.
Balansag described the empty hallways as "boring corridors of nothingness."
In addition to art prints and masks for the walls, the group is working to get carved Alaska Native wooden paddles for the walls, Dow said.
BASE got its start last year after school staff decided that a peer help group could assist teens in crisis, said Bob Davis, assistant principal. The session did not go all that well with students, he said. "They came into a staff meeting and told us what we could do better as teachers."
Although the training was good, students "didn't know what to do with it," Balansag said. Several students started talking about what they could do to help other students, in particular to show them that people care, she said.
"They were right," Davis said of the message from students at the teachers staff meeting. "I've been a teacher for 33 years, and that's one of the most amazing things that I've seen."
The students told their teachers that while they appreciated their efforts, many of the students have had the same teachers over and over through the years and their methods don't change.
"A lot of teachers were defensive," Davis said. "I'll admit, I got my back up a bit."
BASE is not about picking on teachers. It's about building up students and improving their school life.
"Because of COVID, we're not able to interact with each other normally," sophomore Kiara Harrison said. It's easy for students to feel disconnected when they can't see everyone's faces.
Balansag believes the mental health of students was not a top priority "even before COVID, as it should have been." The challenges include problems at home, pressures of school work and students who are rude to each other, Dow said.
"It really isn't anyone's fault, but we (the schools) don't have the resources," Balansag said, noting that the schools have just one counselor. "As students, we can start to change that," she said, in particular by trying to build more community support.
Students appreciate the art and plants, which "really brighten up the halls," Harrison said. BASE also sells breakfasts at the high school and middle school. "A lot of people really enjoy the breakfast cart," Harrison said.
The schools do not have a breakfast program. BASE saw the cart "as just another way to support our peers," Balansag said.
Going forward, it will be important for BASE to get more younger students involved, Harrison said. In addition to the 10 high schoolers, there are about eight middle school students in the group.
The group handed out welcome-back gift bags at the start of the school year. They provide teachers with coupons to the breakfast cart, so that they can hand them out for student achievements or acts of kindness, Davis said.
The group also gives out breakfast cart punch cards for students who could not otherwise afford to buy the food, school counselor Addy Esco said.
The new group is doing a lot to help, Esco said, though she reminds them it takes time to change the culture in school.
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