Case studies

What it looked like in two real schools.

A case study here is one school, in its own words: which film programs it licensed, how it ran them with a whole grade, week by week, and where things stood by the end. Both ran the Creative Coping Toolkit as Tier 1 support — evidence-based mental health education for every student, not only the ones already struggling.

Four film programs, grades 6–8 and 10, one public district and one private school

Two schools, two ways in

One district of 7,000 students across 13 schools gave each middle-school grade its own program — LIKE in 6th, Angst in 7th, Upstanders in 8th — on a year-long license, after a single Angst screening about five years ago. One private high school in Illinois ran Race to Be Human with every tenth grader, six class periods, one a week. After the email home, not one family opted out.

85%of the district’s Angst viewers said mental health is somewhat to extremely important for their school to address.Plymouth Public SchoolsHow two middle schools used Angst, LIKE and Upstanders as grade-level mental health education resources.Read the case study 140high school students at the school — every tenth grader took part, and not one family opted out.Illinois private schoolHow tenth-grade students used Race to Be Human across six class periods to explore race, identity, empathy and belonging.Read the case study

The pattern both schools followed

An email home first. Families heard what was coming, and what the film covered, before any student watched.
A whole grade, together. Not an assembly for everyone and not a small group: one grade at a time, so the conversation afterwards was shared.
Discussion in class. A guided conversation straight after the film, led by the educators and counselors who were already in the room.
Chapter clips across the year. The film came back in short chapter modules, so it was a year of the same language rather than one event.

The film programs they used

All four programs appear in these two studies. Each is a documentary under an hour and the Learning Journey built around it: chapters, guided activities, expert answers and group leader guides, run by educators and counselors without clinical training.

AngstRaising awareness around anxiety.

LIKEFinding balance in our digital world.

UpstandersFinding strategies to overcome cyber-bullying. Content note: includes a teen suicide storyline.

Race to Be HumanAddressing the impact of racism on mental health.

Who else runs the Toolkit

Beyond these two schools: districts, universities, associations, companies and government agencies license the Creative Coping Toolkit. More than a million people have taken part, in over 30 countries, since 2010.

See the Toolkit for yourself

Previews of all four programs, the full group leader guides and a sample engagement report. Free, with no payment details, and nothing ends on a date.

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