These are friends of Jeremy Gardner and others:

 

Megan Hardie and the entire wellness team can not get enough praise for their work, which includes orchestrating a highly successful speaker series. This morning's assembly was dedicated to Jenifer Lippincott, an accomplished author on teenage issues--from brain function to tough parent/child discussion. We looked at the pace of brain evolution, neuro-chemical secretions and even studied a continuum of emotional indicators that ranged from 0% to 125%. I think that that is what we are observing here:

 

However valid the content of the presentation, it's safe to say that the connective energy between speaker and audience was spent by the time the hour was finished.  Lippincott raised some valid questions and answers. For example, short term depressive moods can be combatted by throwing oneself into activity. 

 

Any community comprised of dozens of members (teenagers or adults) is going to to deal with issues of depression. We are a community of hundreds, so we know we should be vigilant and proactive. And, it turns out, we should throw ourselves into things.


 

Jenifer established that having at least one single meaningful relationship is critical to averting the worst sense of alienation that teenagers can experience. The key is being connected and involved.


 

Let's look at some involvement. This is Chris singing some R & B (Jackie Wilson's Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher) in front of the whole school spontaneously; (he didn't have time to take off his coat):

 

And this is Lindsay and Caleigh belting out an amazing Some Kind Of Wonderful.


 

These kids are about to throw themselves into biology!


 

In this morning's assembly, we learned about the importance of dealing with stress. Some of us are doing just fine:


 

Quite a few students--mostly males from my observation--are coping with stress by playing a shoot-em-up Internet game called Call Of Duty, or "COD4".


 

This might be what you see just before you blow somebody up:


 


One way or the other, I think that our students are doing pretty well, finding their own ways of coping. These are giving me their "tiger" look: