The Samsung Welfare Foundation holds a training session for about 700 middle and high school teachers and administrators from across the country at Yonsei University's Centennial Hall on Tuesday and Wednesday. [Samsung Welfare Foundation]
The Samsung Welfare Foundation holds a training session for about 700 middle and high school teachers and administrators from across the country at Yonsei University's Centennial Hall on Tuesday and Wednesday. [Samsung Welfare Foundation]

The Samsung Welfare Foundation held a two-day training session Tuesday and Wednesday at Yonsei University's Centennial Hall for about 700 middle and high school teachers and administrators from across the country, the foundation announced Thursday.

The youth mental wellness program was developed to address and prevent mental health problems among adolescents. The foundation developed it in collaboration with a research team led by Kim Joo-hwan, a Yonsei University professor and authority in neuroscience-based meditation, and will begin distributing it to middle and high schools nationwide in September.

The program consists of a daily component — a roughly five-minute session run during morning homeroom — and a monthly intensive component conducted during class time. It was designed to maximize practical applicability, allowing teachers to incorporate it into the school day without any changes to the existing curriculum.

Last year, the foundation ran a 12-week pilot at five middle and high schools in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province involving 660 students. Results showed improvements in positive indicators such as task persistence, self-affirmation and interpersonal relationships, while negative indicators including depression and anxiety declined.

Students who participated more actively showed greater gains in academic achievement, confirming positive effects on learning as well.

During the training, program researchers shared the initiative's goals and operational direction across 10 educational sessions totaling 15 hours, and introduced its educational significance and methods for applying it in schools.

The first day covered sessions on what mental resilience — referred to in the program as "GRIT" — is and how to build it, the core elements of mental resilience training, the evidence behind its effects, and the relationship between mental resilience training and motivation.

The second day focused on hands-on instruction, with sessions on respect training and self-worth affirmation, gratitude training and overcoming weaknesses, a guide to inner-communication meditation, and how to use the mental growth journal — all aimed at helping teachers apply the program smoothly in their schools.

"Mental resilience is not so much an innate trait as something that can grow through appropriate training and repeated experience," Kim said. "Consistently building mental resilience at school during adolescence can strengthen emotional regulation and resilience, laying an important foundation for young people to grow into healthy members of society."

Ryu Moon-hyung, executive vice president of the Samsung Welfare Foundation, said he hopes the program will take root as a new educational culture in schools and create an environment where young people can grow up healthy. "We will continue to listen to the voices of those on the ground and work to support the healthy development of adolescents," he said.


joze@heraldcorp.com