Royal Oak Middle School wins award for UMatter Week

ROYAL OAK — Royal Oak Middle School was recently awarded $2,500 for its effort to help change and improve the mental health of its students.

Principal Kristen Meldrum said that this award is a great honor, and she owes it to the counseling staff following their dedication to spreading awareness about mental health during the annual UMatter Week.

The most recent UMatter Week took place Oct. 18-25, 2024, at Royal Oak Middle School, 709 N. Washington Ave. This was the third year for ROMS to do the week.

“Our counseling team really goes above and beyond for our students, because they care and they want to, not for the awards, but they definitely deserve them,” Meldrum said. “I think that that was my motivation for applying for this grant, as opposed to the money, but that $2,500, they are going to be beaming and do so much more with the impact of this.”

Meldrum said she applied for a grant from the SET SEG Foundation through the Michigan Association of School Boards.

SET SEG Foundation provides scholarships and grants for students and teachers, according to setseg.org.

“The destigmatization of mental health and encouragement to openly discuss emotional well-being is incredibly important to Michigan youth,” Molly Mellema, SET SEG Foundation executive director, said in a press release sent out by Royal Oak Schools. “We’re proud to reward UMatter Week with an Education Excellence Award for their efforts to support their school and community beyond the classroom.”

Royal Oak Middle School was chosen as a top 10 recipient of this grant out of hundreds of schools. With the $2,500 the school will be given an “Education Excellence Winner” road sign and a commemorative trophy.

“If there aren’t grants like this, there aren’t funds to be able to continue to do this work,” Meldrum said. “I’m just very grateful to SET SEG for putting this out and working with the MASB as well.”

UMatter Week is full of events and activities for the students to learn and gain awareness of mental health. Each day of the week centers on a specific topic, like self-care, empathy, kindness, mindfulness and gratitude, according to a press release sent by Royal Oak Schools.

According to Meldrum, the middle school was inspired by Royal Oak High School’s version of UMatter Week.

Meldrum said some of the most impactful initiatives she has seen so far would be therapy dogs and an activity called “Chalk Talk.”

“The therapy dogs is something we added this year, and the coordination of that is very difficult; we take a lot into consideration. Certified therapy dogs can have a huge impact on mental health,” Meldrum said. “I think that the dogs brought the most visible joy and kind of had the biggest impact right away. You know, you see the dog, you see the smile.”

Chalk Talk is an activity that has the students write inspirational and positive messages outside the school when they go out for recess and during lunch.

“Anytime our parents, our staff, our students in our community walk through our campus, they are able to see positive messages out there,” Meldrum said.

Meldrum said that Royal Oak Middle School is always putting student mental health first through the Character Strong Curriculum, which teaches sixth graders to eighth graders to be comfortable with mental health.

“We put mental health and social emotional learning at the forefront. Our students just see it as a part of their every day, as opposed to something we do for a week,” Meldrum said. “Our curriculum has made it so that when we do talk about mental health, it’s not, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that,’ it’s just a conversation they are used to having so that when they do need to ask for help, it’s the norm.”

The goal, according to Meldrum, is to integrate these practices into the students’ lives to make sure they feel safe talking about mental health with trusted adults, and the $2,500 is a way to do so.

“This is going to make such an impact, and I can’t even imagine what they (the counselors) are going to do with it, because they have done so much with limited funds already,” Meldrum said. “This may be able to make a week into a month, a month into two. This is going to change the impact of the amount of time we are able to spend on something like this.”

“So, we’re excited to be able to see. I’m also very happy that there won’t be a rush on what we have to do with it. You know, we have time to plan for the fall,” she said.

Royal Oak Middle School will be receiving the award at 6:30 p.m. March 13 at the school board meeting at 800 DeVillen.

For more information on Royal Oak Schools and Royal Oak Middle School, visit royaloakschools.org. For more information on SET SEG, visit setseg.org/foundation.