Oxford High School’s RISE Club, a club dedicated to create safe communities to discuss topics surrounding mental health, has recently been focusing how things like anxiety and stress can be recognized and how to handle it. During this month, members of the club have been working on presentations to present to the rest of the club on stress and anxiety. These presentations are given by certified peer educators, which is a certification that is presented to members of the club that train to become one of these certified educators.

“In order for a RISE member to present inside classrooms they must become certified peer educators,” junior member Harper Gray said. “This is a really cool program because out of 10,000 schools that offer this certification, three of them are high schools, and only one is a public school, and that’s Oxford High School. Our former sponsor, Kakky Brown, has been kind enough to come train RISE members, once each semester, allowing us to continue this process. From there, presenters will meet as a group and practice the presenting our presentation to each other so they’re confident in their material and delivery.”

The purpose of the RISE Club is to create a safe space that opens up to conversations about topics such as mental health. The presentations help peer educators spark these conversations by educating and informing other members about the given topic.

“Presentations consist of material talking about anxiety, how to recognize it, and how to react to it,” Gray said. “We include activities where students draw what the feel when they get anxious, offering a visual, and then another activity called “Toolbox” where students create a toolbox featuring various healthy ways they cope with their anxiety. We also offer various opportunities for students to share what they may have written down or what they have learned.”

Along with members of the club giving presentations on March 21-22, members of the RISE Club collaborated with members of the Pickleball Club to host a weekend event on March 23. This event consisted of pickleball games, a fun run, and yoga. There are going to be three main events: the pickleball tournament, yoga sessions, and a color run through Avent park,” senior member of the Pickleball Club Margaret Brown said. The tournament is set up to be less of a competition and more of a fun activity for everyone to participate in, so there is not a set bracket, players just get to play whoever is available to play.”

Both the Pickleball Club and RISE decided that co-hosting an event would be beneficial and crucial to putting on an event of the size. Members from both clubs joined together to come up with plans and organize the event.

“I think just being able to put on such a big first event has been my favorite part. It’s exciting to see our ideas come to life and to be a part of something that will last after we graduate. Having a big club like RISE be excited about the club has been such a blessing and I don’t think we could have pulled off such a big event without them,” Brown said.

While there aren’t any current set dates for future events, both RISE and the Pickleball Club have ideas in mind for more events further down the road. Having members contributing ideas is what makes these events possible.

“A lot of this year has been figuring things out as a team, and I don’t think any of our leaders could do that without the others,” junior RISE member Henry Jones said. “It’s great to have this group to bounce ideas off of and create events like this for our students to enjoy.”