The QUESTion Project Co-Founder Gerard Senehi and Principal Michael Barakat led a session exploring students’ humanity as a foundational dimension of mental health and wellbeing in an age of artificial intelligence.
The session invited educators, school leaders, and mental health professionals to look beyond symptom-focused and siloed approaches to school mental health and examine the deeper roots of today’s challenges. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in public schools, the presentation focused on how disconnection—from self, from others, and from life—contributes to rising anxiety, loneliness, polarization, and a growing crisis of meaning among young people.
A framework of connectedness was introduced, reframing the “whole child” not as a collection of skills or competencies, but as an integrated, relational self. Participants explored how cultivating connection across three core domains—connection to self, connection to others, and connection to life—strengthens agency, belonging, purpose, and resilience. Concrete examples from school communities illustrated how supporting students’ capacity to relate authentically to their experience can serve as a powerful lever for mental health and learning.
As schools increasingly grapple with artificial intelligence and technological acceleration, the session centered the uniquely human capacities that technology cannot replace. By grounding mental health practice in students’ humanity, the conversation highlighted pathways toward more coherent, preventative, and transformative approaches to supporting student wellbeing.
QUESTion Project Co-Founder Gerard Senehi and Principal Michael Barakat lead a session exploring students’ humanity
