District launches mental health program for its educators

Doug Sweitzer believes he can help transform the personal and professional lives of Greensburg Salem School District staff.

A former employee of the Red Lion Area School District in York County, Sweitzer will train about six Greensburg Salem teachers in a mental health program after approval by the school board last week.

Sweitzer will lean on his 17 years of experience teaching mental fitness and resiliency to military veterans, first responders, educators and students through programs at Outdoor Odyssey — a camp tucked into the mountains of Jenner, Somerset County.

Mentorship to mental health

Retired Marine Corps Gen. Tom Jones bought the former Boy Scout camp in 1998 to teach children about mentorship. For 27 years, the program has paired local elementary students with high schoolers to foster mentoring relationships.

A decade after Outdoor Odyssey’s inception, Jones created Semper Fi Odyssey — weeklong retreats dedicated to supporting retired military personnel in the transition to civilian life. Developing resumes and applying for jobs were some of the primary focuses.

It wasn’t until five years ago Jones realized the need to teach the veterans about mental health care — how to identify stressors, take note of their physical impact on the body and address them.

It all goes back to basic human neurobiology, said Sweitzer — who serves on Outdoor Odyssey’s board of directors.

“When we started doing that with these veterans,” he said, “the biggest statement they would say is, ‘Why didn’t anybody ever teach me that my body’s doing what it’s designed to do, and I’m supposed to feel this way when I’m having a bad day?’”

The program quickly expanded to first responders, including firefighters and police officers from Greensburg and paramedics from Pittsburgh.

Educators roped into veteran program

When former Greensburg Salem administrator Lisa Rullo saw Semper Fi Odyssey in action, she knew educators also had a place in the program.

“I wish I would have had an understanding of the mental fitness and resiliency that I do now when I was an employee (at Greensburg Salem),” said Rullo, who served in the district from 1996 to 2015.

“I know I would have been able to affect so much more positively every aspect of what I did.”

With some convincing, Jones agreed to open Semper Fi Odyssey to Greensburg Salem educators in 2022.

“Gen. Jones at first was very hesitant — ‘Hold on, we’re going to bring teachers in with veterans?’” Sweitzer said. “But he will tell you now that he was 100% wrong. Once we started bringing teachers and educators and mixing them in with the veterans, it’s been a beautiful relationship.”

Since then, dozens of the district’s teachers, administrators and staff have participated in the weeklong retreats.

Six Greensburg teachers to be trained

The program trains participants in what Outdoor Odyssey has termed mental fitness and resiliency — “mental fitness” referring to human neurobiology and “resiliency” referring to the discipline of properly managing stressors.

Now, Greensburg Salem is poised to take it a step further.

Through a $170,000 grant from Pittsburgh-based Richard King Mellon Foundation accepted by the school board this week, Sweitzer will train six of the district’s middle school teachers in mental health care through his year-old company, 3Most LLC.

The educators will receive a certificate in the program, which has been endorsed by the Board of Medicine — a national nonprofit medical board founded by psychiatrist and translational neuroscientist David Rubin.

Though Sweitzer will have to work with the district and Outdoor Odyssey to draft a curriculum for the six teachers to complete, he is confident they will see positive outcomes.

“If teachers understand how to take care of themselves, then what are they going to be? They are going to be the best version (of themselves) in front of the kids in the classroom.

“You don’t need to teach teachers how to take care of kids,” Sweitzer said. “They know how to do that. What happens is teachers get overextended and a lot of our society at large doesn’t appreciate the amount of stress that’s on a teacher in any given school day. They have no time to themselves, especially the really good teachers.”

Rullo has spent four years advocating for the program. The collaboration with 3Most and Sweitzer is a strong step in the right direction, she said.