Branching Minds is excited to be partnering with The Jed Foundation to bring essential resources to your high school classrooms! JED’s mission is to “empower teens and young adults by building resiliency and life skills, promoting social connectedness, and encouraging help-seeking and help-giving behaviors through [their] nationally recognized programs, digital channels, and partnerships, as well as through the media” (JED). Together, we have developed five new cards for our support library.

These support cards are designed for high school students to help guide them through essential transitional and life skills as they graduate and move on to their post-high school plans – whether that is college, career, the military, or another path. These cards are focused on Communication, Diversity and Inclusion, Relationship Skills, Empathy and Critical Thinking, and Self-Awareness. JED has identified these as crucial skills students need to learn as they graduate. We are so excited that we could collaborate to bring these valuable tools to your high school students!

Mental health challenges are a growing concern among teens and young adults. Suicide rates have increased over the past decade and a growing number of students report experiencing mental, behavioral, or emotional health issues.

JED is committed to lowering these numbers. Learn more and access resources at jedfoundation.org.

Through their important work, JED identified a few areas that stand out as extremely important when it comes to helping teens and young adults manage their mental health. Among these are:

Based on these identified skill areas, JED and Branching Minds were able to collaborate to develop interventions geared toward high school students. These resources were designed intentionally for secondary teachers to include opportunities for the students to practice skills in a variety of settings and methods. The interventions are also designed to be utilized carte blanche – teachers can decide how and when they want to use the provided resources and can elect to leave out or adjust portions in order to meet the needs of their students.

In order to add the JED supports to an intervention plan, you will first need to make sure they are marked available for your school. You can type “JED” or “The Jed Foundation” in the search bar of the SEL and Behavior Library. Staff members with managing permissions will be able to mark the supports as available for your school. If your school team is unable to find or add the JED supports, you can chat with the Branching Minds team and we will be glad to help!

To create an SEL and Behavioral Health Intervention plan for an individual student, follow these steps:

To add the JED supports to a group plan, follow these steps:

2. Then click the green button to Add Interventions and Supports for the students in the group.

3. Enter “The Jed Foundation” in the search bar to locate the JED supports.

4. Select the one(s) you want to assign, and click the green Add to Plan button

5. Enter the requested information to set up the intervention:

6. Click Save

For more guidance and support, check out these suggested Help Desk articles:

The JED lessons are designed to be taught as a set, but there is no set order that you necessarily need to follow. You can choose to teach all five lessons at once over 1-2 weeks, or you may choose to spread them out more throughout the year. You could also teach the main lesson and revisit the topic via the extra activities and resources provided on the support cards.

When you open one of the JED lesson cards in the Branching Minds support library you will see that there is a printable JED lesson that was designed to be handed out to students. Additionally in the “How To Use” section, you will notice extra activities and resources that can be used in a Tier 1, 2, or 3 group. These resources can be accessed and implemented individually or can be utilized as a complete unit, depending on your classroom needs. Alternatively, you can teach some of the components as a whole-class Tier 1 lesson and then use some of the activities and resources as a small group Tier 2 or 3 lesson.

It is recommended that teachers work through the JED lessons with the whole class (Tier 1). Teachers can then meet with a small group of students identified as being Tier 2 to provide further support. This would typically be a group of 3-5 students and should meet for an additional 60-90 minutes outside of the core instruction each week (for example, this could be two or three 30-minute intervention periods). While working in these groups, teachers can provide more explicit instruction, encouragement, specific feedback, positive reinforcement, and careful scaffolding.