WHOLE Schools: The movement doesn't end here

A personal reflection on the last four years of the movement that transformed mental health awareness in DPS 

In 2022, as the pandemic continued to test the steadiness of our community’s core pillars, I was earning my Master’s of Public Health from UNC-Chapel Hill.

One day, I happened upon an opportunity at DPS Foundation to address the challenges COVID had intensified for one essential pillar – public schools.

Students, educators, and families have long carried mental health challenges. COVID just happened to illuminate them. The Foundation, along with community partners, was made to ask: What are we going to do to support our students?

As a graduate student, I was all of a sudden tasked with helping DPS assess what can be done to respond to this growing youth mental health crisis. In February 2022, I signed onto DPSF as the lead research fellow before quickly moving to Project Manager for the newly launched WHOLE Schools Movement. 

Before we built anything, we listened.

Alongside an incredible team of fellow graduate students, we researched what school districts across North Carolina, the United States, and even internationally were doing to support student well-being. We examined promising practices, explored emerging research, and looked for examples of what was possible.

But the most important learning didn't come from reports. It came from people.

We sat in focus groups with educators, principals, students, caregivers, community leaders, and mental health professionals. We intentionally created spaces for Black and Brown students and families, LGBTQ+ community members, and other groups whose voices are too often left out of conversations about education and wellness.

Again and again, we heard the same message:

People were exhausted. People were hurting. People wanted schools to be places where they could not only learn, but belong.

Those conversations eventually became an advisory committee. Those committee meetings became a vision. And that vision eventually became what Durham now knows as the WHOLE Schools Movement. 

Over the next three years, WHOLE Schools grew into a four-pillar strategy. Through Mental Health Ambassadors, Community Education, Model Schools, and the WHOLE Schools Fund, we explored what it looks like to support the whole person in a school community. Together, these efforts reached thousands of students, educators, families, and community members across Durham.

Looking back, what stays with me most is not the numbers.

It's the moments.

I think about our Adult Mental Health Retreats in partnership with Pupusas for Education.

On paper, they were professional learning opportunities. In reality, they became spaces where adults remembered they were human. We myth-busted mental health misconceptions. We learned about Adverse Childhood Experiences. We talked about stress, trauma, and resilience. But we also danced. We laughed. We experienced laugh yoga together. We participated in healing circles that challenged us to think differently about what joy feels like, what it looks like, and whether we allow ourselves to experience it often enough.

Those retreats taught me something important: healing isn't always serious. Sometimes healing looks like laughter. Sometimes it looks like connection. Sometimes it looks like being seen.

I think about our first WHOLE-istic Healing Festival in 2023.

Every choice was intentional. We chose to have safety marshals instead of police because we wanted to demonstrate that safety can be communal. We wanted people to experience what it felt like to be cared for by the community.

I remember leading a collective scream activity. At first, people laughed. Then they participated.

And in that moment, we learned a lesson together: carrying too much for too long and carrying it silently is harmful. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is release what we've been holding.

That festival was filled with joy, music, healing, resources, and community. But more importantly, it reminded us that wellness doesn't have to feel clinical. It can feel celebratory.

I also think about the Healthy Minds, Stronger Schools Conference in 2024.

For me, this event represented everything the WHOLE Schools Movement aspired to be: a place where research, lived experience, policy, and community could all sit at the same table.

We welcomed Shadeen Francis (a marriage and family therapist, professor, and author), who challenged us to think more deeply about the science behind mental health and wellness and how our brains, bodies, and environments are interconnected. Her message reinforced something we had been learning throughout this work: wellness is not an individual responsibility alone. It is shaped by the systems, relationships, and conditions surrounding us every day.

The conference also created opportunities for honest conversations across our community. Members of the Durham Board of Education participated in a panel discussing how policy can support student and educator wellbeing. Students themselves took the stage to share what they were experiencing in real time, offering insights that no report or data point could fully capture.

One of the most powerful moments came through an interactive installation called "A Day in the Life of a Student." Participants walked through a student's day and encountered experiences that many young people navigate regularly: missing breakfast, feeling disconnected from peers, carrying family responsibilities, experiencing academic pressure, navigating conflict, or feeling unseen. With each challenge, participants added another rock to a backpack.

By the end of the experience, the backpack had become almost unbearably heavy.

The lesson was simple but profound.

Many of our students are carrying an enormous weight every single day, often without anyone fully recognizing the burden. What might look like disengagement, frustration, or exhaustion is sometimes the result of carrying far more than any young person should have to carry alone.

The exhibit challenged us to move beyond asking, "What's wrong with this student?" and instead ask, "What might this student be carrying?"

That question has stayed with me ever since.

The conference was filled with workshops, resources, conversations, and moments of learning. This is the space where our Thrive Guide emerged, a resource guide shifting how we talk about mental health and wellness with tools, language, activities, and more. But more than anything, the conference reminded me that when a community comes together with curiosity, honesty, and a willingness to listen, new possibilities for creating healthier schools emerge.

It’s a responsibility we all share. 

WHOLE Schools Fund and Cohort Model

And then there's my favorite part of this entire movement: the WHOLE Schools Fund and cohort model.

Now, as the Senior Grants Program Manager, if you've spent any time around me, you've probably heard me say grants and the cohort model are my biases. 

The WHOLE Schools Fund evolved from simply supporting projects to supporting people. We paired funding with coaching, relationship-building, technical assistance, and peer learning. We created a cohort model to provide opportunities for educators, students, caregivers, and community members to learn alongside one another. The result wasn't just stronger projects. It was stronger leaders. It was stronger relationships. It was stronger communities.

We learned that transformation happens when people are cultivated, not just evaluated.

Throughout this journey, several lessons became impossible to ignore.

First, wellness is collective work. Every meaningful success emerged from partnership. Schools, families, nonprofits, mental health professionals, students, caregivers, funders, and community organizations all played and continue to play a role. 

Second, readiness for change exists on a spectrum. People move through change differently. Schools move through change differently. And those positions shift based on circumstances, capacity, crises, and competing priorities. Sustainable change requires persistence, patience, and grace.

Third, when we talk about student well-being, we must also consider the conditions surrounding students, families, and educators every day because they matter:  

Food insecurity matters.

Housing stability matters.

Economic opportunity matters.

Transportation matters.

Belonging matters.

Wellness and equity have always been interconnected.

And finally, we learned wellness works best when it is intentionally woven into culture.  The strongest outcomes happened when tending to one’s mental health and well-being became embedded in how people worked, learned, led, and connected. 

What’s next

In June 2026, the WHOLE Schools Movement in its current iteration will be sunsetting. But the movement continues.

I look forward to having DPSF maintain wellness and mental health as a continuous focus area in our grants program. We have seen firsthand the power of investing in people, not just projects, leading the cohort model to remain a cornerstone of our work. Other aspects of WHOLE Schools will continue through community partners, like Alliance Health in collaboration with DPS.

Although the formal WHOLE Schools Movement is concluding, its impact is not.

The movement changed us.

It changed how we think about grants and the people behind the bold ideas. It changed how we engage families. It changed how we at the Foundation fundamentally approach our work and each other. 

One of our team tenets is "Honoring the WHOLE Teammate." We commit to modeling a behavior of respecting the whole selves people carry with them.

That shift rippled to how we approach our grantees, ensuring every one of them has wraparound support every step along the way. 

It rippled to more mindfully centering wellness conversations with working-class Latinx families in culturally affirming and accessible ways.

It rippled to how we look at every member of the DPS community as individuals who should not just survive but thrive.

As I reflect on the last four years, I want to end by saying thank you.

Thank you to every student who shared their story.

Thank you to every educator who showed up for a training after a long day.

Thank you to every family who attended an event.

Thank you to every community partner and member who believed in a different vision for what school wellness could look like.

You helped create a school district more prepared to talk about wellness, more connected to resources, and more willing to imagine what is possible when we support the whole person. The WHOLE Schools Movement, in this form, may be ending. But movements were never meant to stay still. They were meant to spread.

If you truly believe that every child deserves to learn in an environment where they are fully seen and supported, what responsibility do you carry to help make that vision a reality?

Thank you for continuing to champion this cause.

See you soon,

Taylor Outler, MPH

Senior Program Manager, Grants