Crowley ISD students didn’t go to school last Friday.
The absence was intentional — for their mental health.
The district used the Feb. 13 student holiday to host a mental health summit at North Crowley High School focused on what leaders say is a growing challenge for teenagers: The pressure to perform in classrooms, on fields and stages and, increasingly, online.
For Crowley High School senior and class president Madyson Stanton, that pressure often hides behind a smile.
“People don’t always really see what’s going on on the inside,” Stanton said. “They kind of just see me as this outgoing person that always has a lot going on for herself. But people don’t see the kind of strain that it puts on me a lot of times.”
National research mirrors Stanton’s experience. A 2024 survey conducted with Harvard University and Indiana University researchers found more than half of U.S. teenagers report feeling pressure to plan their futures and achieve at high levels, with many describing burnout tied to academics and extracurricular demands.
Stanton said pressure builds from multiple directions: academics, extracurriculars, college decisions and social media expectations.
“I really feel like it’s a combination, a combination of everything,” she said.
At the same time, federal health data show youth mental health concerns rising nationwide. Nearly 60% of U.S. teen girls reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in recent surveys, and about 30% said they had seriously considered suicide.
Stanton avoided social media until this year after seeing how it affected peers. She advises fellow high school students and their parents to do the same.
“I wonder who’s going to like my stuff, I wonder what they’re going to say about this post and that post. And that’s everyone,” Stanton said.
District leaders say that kind of strain is increasingly common — even among students who appear most successful, such as a class president.
“When they leave the community of Crowley, where we’ve celebrated them and told them how great they are, they reach real life and they don’t know how to face it,” said Trina Lane, executive director of counseling services. “I mean our students, socially and emotionally, they crash.”
The Mind Over Medals Mental Health Summit brought together student-athletes, fine arts performers and student leaders for panel discussions, workshops and a keynote from Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman and North Crowley graduate Tyler Smith.
The district’s focus includes students whose struggles may be least visible, Lane said.
“I look at that invisible child, like the high achiever,” she said. “Nobody thinks that that person is going to need mental health because they have it all together. They’re visible to the public but emotionally invisible to everyone.”
Smith, who graduated from North Crowley in 2019 after receiving a full-ride scholarship to play football at the University of Tulsa, told the Fort Worth Report returning to speak felt personal.
“Definitely a full-circle moment for sure,” Smith said. “I’m just happy to be able to do this, to come back to where I’m from and have a platform and a message.”
He said he felt pressure as a student but rarely spoke about it.
Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman and North Crowley High School graduate Tyler Smith speaks to students during Crowley ISD’s Mind Over Medals Mental Health Summit on Feb. 13 at North Crowley High School. (Matthew Sgroi | Fort Worth Report)
“I felt the pressure to be successful the same way anybody else does, and it wasn’t something that I did talk about a lot,” Smith said. “It was something I felt deeply, something that I obviously internalized.”
Looking back, he wishes he was more honest with himself, his coaches, friends and family, he said. Now in the NFL, he uses all support available to him, including therapists, personal assistants and fitness coaches.
Smith told students he hopes conversations around mental health are more open than when he was growing up, which wasn’t long ago, he noted.
That cultural shift, or normalizing conversations about mental health for both students and parents, is what the district hopes to encourage, Lane said.
“I just don’t think we talked a lot about that stuff,” Smith said. “It was more about having that outward appearance of being successful and looking like I had it all figured out.”
Now that he’s reached his goal of playing football at the highest level — and signed a four-year contract in September worth $96 million — Smith said strength looks different than he once believed. He wishes it didn’t take him so long to find out.
“Strength is the willingness to be vulnerable,” Smith said.
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @matthewsgroi1.
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