Gumboot Friday and Mental Health

Hi everyone, I am back!

Last Friday was Gumboot Friday. The New Zealander of the year, Mike King decided this. Gumboot
Friday is a day where everyone is encouraged to wear gumboots. It is also supporting Mental Health.
Mental Health is like your emotional Well Being. The reason why Gumboot Friday is called Gumboot
Friday is because when you are feeling sad or blue, it feels like you are walking through the mud and
usually you walk through the mud in gumboots. So, that is why Gumboot Friday is called Gumboot Friday.
At school the teachers wore gumboots and only 1 student; me.

Then, 30 of our students from our Syndicate got picked to fill in a form. The form was about Mental Health.
The form was called ‘Healthy Puketapapa Student Questionnaire’. One of the questions in the form was
‘What would you like to be better in the community?’ Lots of people wrote ‘Mental Health’. Another
question was ‘How do you think you can do your part in making this happen?’ One of the students’
responses was ‘Post positive letters into mailboxes’ and the teachers thought that we could do that. So,
on Gumboot Friday, we wrote positive and uplifting quotes and messages on cards. On the back, we
wrote: ‘Supporting Mental Health’.

Then, yesterday, we were put into groups of 10, 9, 8 or 7 with a parent or a teacher and we got to go
down different streets delivering the cards into random mailboxes.

All this related to our Inquiry topic; Hauora, or Wellbeing. This related to Hauora because it is making people feel good about themselves, and this worked. Today, the teachers received an email from the
office saying that a parent had rung our school to say that her son had received one of the messages and
it had made his day. He suffers from depression. This made us all feel so happy that our messages had
worked.

Here is some images of the cards that I did:

My opinion to this is that I think it was a great idea. I feel really good about other people feeling good about
what we have done. I think this because everyone deserves to know that they are awesome or that they
are good at something. The quotes were very positive and that is all that people need to brighten their
day.
Next time, we are going say on the back that the people that got them can repost them so that our
messages will go further than the community.

If you got one, it must of brightened your day.

Here is some photos from the day:

Thanks for reading my blogpost.

Blog you later!