Robyn Briggs (West Jordan High School), Donna Birrell (Bluffdale Elementary) and Joel P. Jensen Middle School were among the eight 2025 ResilientYOU Education Tribute Award winners honored for their extraordinary efforts in building resilience skills within their schools and communities.

“The education community is just amazing,” ResilientYOU Founder and CEO Steve James said. “All our educators and teachers and administrators, they're all heroes, and we wanted to do our best to recognize those efforts.”

ResilientYOU provides tools and resources for parents and educators to empower children and families to meet life’s challenges in a healthy way.

“Especially as we come out of the challenging circumstances of the last five years, we've learned the incredible importance of building resilience in both children and families and knowing that our children, as they build the strength to be able to overcome obstacles, and know that they can do hard things—that's especially vital right now—and to be able to recover from difficult challenges, especially those that we’ve faced lately,” James said.

The ResilisentYOU Education Tribute Awards were first given to educators rising to the challenges of the pandemic. The awards continue to be a way to recognize outstanding schools, teachers, administrators, mental health/wellness professionals and parent groups.

West Jordan High School teacher Robyn Briggs was selected as the 2025 Outstanding Secondary Teacher for her role in growing the school’s Sources of Strength suicide prevention program.

“One of the big ideas behind our Sources of Strength program is the idea of resilience, of when bad things happen, rather than dwelling in them, looking at the strengths that you have in your life,” Briggs said. “Resilience is something that definitely needs to be taught.”

Briggs selects 30 peer-nominated students, representing a wide cross-section of student interests, to plan activities and education campaigns throughout the year which encourage WJHS students to use healthy coping skills and seek out trusted resources when they struggle with their mental health.

“I help them know how to overcome their own struggles so that then they can go out into their community and overcome struggles and turn to their strengths when they're struggling,” Briggs said.

Briggs has been the teacher and adviser for the Sources of Strength class and club for the past three years. In that time, she has seen an increase in attendance at activities and in the number of students accessing mental health resources. She said when students become familiar with the eight sources of strength through activities and education campaigns, talking about mental health and seeking help become normalized.

WJHS School Counselor Rachelle Watts said Briggs is the perfect teacher for the program.

“We couldn't have the success with the program without her at the helm,” she said. “We are so grateful to have her.”

Briggs feels like the Sources of Strength adviser is the perfect job for her.

“I feel like the things that I'm learning from the kids and the things that they teach me every day are making me a better person and making me a better teacher, because these conversations probably wouldn't happen if it weren't for me being educated in suicide prevention, and bringing these things up, and actively going out of my way to teach resilience,” Briggs said. “You've got to start the conversation in order for the conversation to happen.”

The ResilientYOU 2025 Outstanding Secondary School winner was Joel P. Jensen Middle School, where the values of relationships, learning and perseverance drive every decision.

“Relationships, learning and perseverance—that's just kind of been our tagline with everything,” JPJMS Principal Aaron Hunter said. “Getting that award from the ResilientYOU organization was a fitting end to a year-long push to have our kids value relationships, value learning and value having perseverance and being resilient.”

Hunter said focusing on the three values, which were chosen based on feedback from staff and community members, has led to a more positive school climate.

“I don't have a quantitative number, but last school year I can wholeheartedly say—and if you talk to our teachers they would agree—that it was just a really good school year, as far as connecting with the kids and just having better student-teacher relationships and student-admin relationships,” he said. “And I'd like to think that because we made those values more visible, and we talked about them a lot more, that that had something to do with it.”