Smiths Station mom turns daughter’s suicide into new program for schools. Follow the journey
Born from the pain of her 18-year-old daughter, Lexi Webb, dying by suicide two years ago, Andrea Mills of Smiths Station has created a curriculum to help schools teach students the resiliency they need to choose life over death.
Mills, a registered nurse with a degree in psychology, met with moms, teens and educators to write the Love Like Lexi Project for grades 6-12.
St. Luke School is the first to implement the curriculum. Glenwood School plans to start this month. And the Muscogee County School District is considering it as well.
Although the curriculum originally was written for Christian-based lessons, Mills told the Ledger-Enquirer she has a secular version appropriate for public schools. She declined to disclose the cost, but said schools are charged only to cover the project’s expenses.
The L-E reported in February the launch of the LLL Project. This school year, we followed St. Luke’s journey through the project.
The LLL Project starts with teacher training, a parent assembly and a student assembly. The curriculum comprises five classroom lessons spread over three weeks and focusing on these main messages:
- You matter
- Hope
- Identity
- Purpose
- Belonging.
The curriculum concludes with a community service project.
Teacher training
On Aug. 6, St. Luke teachers in grades 6-8, gather in the church’s ministry center for LLL training.
The pressure teens feel when comparing themselves to others can lead them to think, “I am nothing,” Mills tells the teachers. So the curriculum emphasizes, “Our worth is given to us by God,” she says.
During a lunch break, eighth-grade language arts teacher Anne Plott, in her 26th year as an educator, calls the curriculum “amazing. I really think the kids will relate to it.”
Only until a St. Luke student, eighth-grader Johnson Wade Yarbrough Jr., died by suicide two years ago — seemingly without warning signs — did Plott think the school needed such a program.
“We were blindsided,” she says.
Susan Slade is Johnson’s mother. He killed himself after his PlayStation was taken away because of bad grades, she tells the L-E.
Slade is a sponsor of the LLL Project at St. Luke through the foundation established in Johnson’s name. She sees it as “the perfect way” to honor him.
While attending the teacher training, Slade envisions how her son would react to the curriculum.
“I think a lot of his answers probably would be, ‘I don’t know,’ because he was a 13-year-old boy,” she says, “… but I would hope reading this and participating in this with kids his age would have given him more of a solid foundation to know that his mistakes don’t define him.”
Four days later, Slade writes on the foundation’s Facebook page, “This isn’t just about ending suicide, … it’s about equipping them to live the LIFE given to them.”
Teen suicide rates
The most recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about youth suicide, published in September 2020, calls it “an increasingly prominent public health issue.”
The national three-year average suicide death rate among ages 10-24 increased by 47.1% from 2007-09 to 2016-18, according to the report. Alabama’s rate increased by 43% while Georgia’s increased by 76.3%, the third-highest in the United States.
From 2016-18, the number of suicide deaths per 100,000 persons ages 10-24 ranged from 10.1 to 11.4 in Alabama and Georgia while the national rate was 10.3, the report says.
According to Kids Count, 39.4 per 100,000 Muscogee County residents ages 15-19 killed themselves in 2019. That’s the lowest rate in the previous 10 years, which had a high of 77.1 per 100,000 in 2015.
The Muscogee County Coroner’s Office tracks suicides in two categories: adult and age 17-and-younger. In the past 10 years, while age 17-and-younger suicides ranged from a low of none in 2010, 2011, 2018 and 2021 (as of Sept. 24) to a high of four in 2015, the adult suicides ranged from a low of 20 in 2012 to a high of 34 in 2013.
Parent assembly
At the Aug. 12 assembly in the ministry center for parents to learn about LLL, St. Luke head of school Richard Green gives them some insight into their children’s behavior.
“I know they are pushing you away,” he says. “They’re telling you they don’t want you there, but they really do want you there. They’re just making you work at it a little harder. (Mills) is going to help you to understand that you really need to continue to be there.”
Mills tells the parents, “You will hear a story about a girl who seemed to have it all but was overcome by the pressures of this world. … I pray that you will have an open heart and an open mind to hear it and receive it.”
Mills says she never knew the voice of suicide could seep into Lexi’s life when vaping threatened her scholarship and reputation.
“There was a battle going on for her life, and we didn’t even know it,” she says. “There was a battle for her identity and her purpose.
“Her identity was tied to the very things she thought she was going to lose. And the end of those things, in her mind, meant the end of her. … She didn’t know that some of her greatest mistakes are just setups for greater things — if you will just learn from them.”
Mills shows photos of six Columbus area teens she says killed themselves within the past two years.
“I’m here today to tell you on the front end what I wish I would have known,” she says.
After the assembly, St. Luke counselor Denise Killough tells the L-E parents will be emailed the lesson plans to discuss them before and after the class with their children.
“Parents are scared to talk about it because they think, if you talk about suicide, you’re implanting that idea,” she says. … “Andrea’s program is about equipping (the students) with support and verbiage that you can use to lift yourself up when you’re feeling really low.”
After the assembly, St. Luke parents Jennifer and Brett Walker tell the L-E they are confident the school’s caring teachers and the project’s thoughtful curriculum will handle this sensitive topic well for their eighth-grade son, Wilson, and his classmates.
“This will help us be aware and go deeper with our children and hopefully open up the communication with them to feel comfortable talking to us about it too,” Jennifer says.
Student assembly
At the Aug. 13 student assembly in the ministry center, St. Luke middle school principal Jennifer Oliver tells the 160 students in grades 6-8, “We are going to open our hearts and our minds to ideas and ourselves.”
As she did at the parent assembly, Mills presents Lexi’s story and an overview of the curriculum. Nobody is immune to the voice of suicide, she tells the students.
“This voice comes to whisper to you during a perfect storm, when you’re having a moment of feeling hopeless, when you’re having a moment of shame or a moment of feeling fear,” she says. “… It will say there is no way out of this, and it will say you are not worthy. … This voice doesn’t get the final say in your life. … Oh, but God does.”
Mills invites the students to sign banners showing they are committed to choosing life. Eighth-grader Wilson Walker stands to be the first student to sign. Each student follows as the song “Rise Up” by Andra Day fills the room.
Mills tells the students, “I want you to remember this moment. … I challenge each of you as you go through this workbook to pour your whole heart into it, allow it to challenge you, allow it to speak into your life and to change you. We love you so much.”
The students applaud Mills, and Green tells them, “We’ll take what she created and turn it into something beautiful that other schools will be able to utilize.”
Several students approach Mills to thank her. A sixth-grade boy tells her, “I know this had to be hard for you, but I appreciate it so much.”
Mills gushes, “It’s working already. … I’m excited for them and their parents for what’s about to happen.”
Classroom lessons
Plott, eighth-grader Caroline Peak and Wilson share with the L-E their thoughts about some LLL lessons.
Aug. 16, the students in Plott’s homeroom are off to an engaged start with the first LLL lesson, affirming that their lives matter. But she has mixed feelings.
“I worry that some of them may still be sitting there thinking they are insignificant or not worthy of love,” she says. “That breaks my heart. … I am optimistic that this will be a time where students can feel safe to share their inner thoughts.”
Aug. 20, the lesson is about anchors in our lives.
“Some anchors are their abilities, sports, grades or friendships,” Plott says. “We discussed how these platforms don’t last — ever. The only anchor in our life that lasts is God.”
Aug. 24, during the lesson about overcoming setbacks, Plott is impressed by the self-awareness of her students.
The discussion leads to tough moments, when Plott sees and hears some students “struggle with the guilt and shame associated with past mistakes,” she says.
Aug. 27, during the lessons about hope, Caroline likes this message: “Our future doesn’t have to end because your biggest fear or failure comes along.”
Wilson’s favorite part of the lesson is about social media.
“It talked about what is our status in the world and which line do we measure up to, the one that goes by the world’s standards or God’s standards,” he says. “It talked about how we always should choose God’s because it doesn’t really matter what the world thinks.”
Sept. 9, the students learn Lexi wrote on her commemorative brick during her senior year at Smiths Station High School that she “fears being unaccepted, failure and the future.”
Plott asks the students to define identity. Wilson replies, “Your identity could be totally different from what’s perceived.”
The lesson plan offers a final thought connected to Wilson’s observation.
“Even if you struggle to believe what God says about you,” Plott says, “it doesn’t change the truth spoken by God to you. … That is your true identity.”
Sept. 17, during the final week of LLL lessons, the students focus on finding purpose and community.
“Students learned that their perspective changes the way they deal with difficult moments,” Plott says. “All things, good and bad, mold us and affect the direction of our lives. … They also were encouraged to look at the communities that they are a part of. Our communities are there for us when times are bad, and with them, we can face anything.”
Assessments
On every level — student, parent, teacher, counselor, administrator — St. Luke praises the LLL Project.
“Even the students who were quiet during the process and didn’t share much were impacted,” Plott says. “Rarely did it seem as if they were uninterested — and if you’re familiar with middle-schoolers, that’s a win.”
Wilson’s father, Brett, says his initial concern about discussing this tough topic with his son proved to not be a problem.
“He didn’t share a lot,” Brett says. “I tried to be respectful. I didn’t snoop or pry, but every week he just said it was good.”
In fact, Wilson liked the LLL curriculum so much, he was disappointed to miss a lesson because of a doctor’s appointment, says his mother, Jennifer. With her daughter attending Columbus High, Jennifer says MCSD should implement this project.
The LLL lessons “just really made you ponder things that you didn’t really think you needed to or wanted to think about,” Wilson says, “but it was necessary.”
His favorite parts were about purpose and community. The takeaway, he says: “We can withstand anything when we come together.”
LLL prompted Caroline to reconsider “who we really should be hanging out with and who our real friends are and how support of your true friends can help a lot through your day-to-day life.”
Both students say they will keep their LLL workbooks available at home.
Killough, the St. Luke counselor, says only one set of parents kept their student out of the LLL lessons, and she received no complaints from those who participated. Many parents expressed gratitude for “starting the conversation,” she says, telling her, “Our kids needed to hear this, and we weren’t really sure how to do it.”
She isn’t aware of any students seeking help or a parent or teacher identifying a struggling student because of LLL, Killough says, but it was the right message in the right way at the right time.
“It’s just done in such a succinct and powerful way,” she says.
Green, the head of school, says he is “100%” glad St. Luke implemented LLL.
“It has made our staff much more aware of how we look at situations and the children,” he says. “This is the perfect curriculum for us, for the social-emotional side of student life.”
That’s why Green, formerly principal of Midland and Aaron Cohn middle schools, recommends the curriculum for MCSD.
“It would be a travesty if the opportunity is not there for every child,” he says. “If we save one child, if one child learns to choose life, this program has paid off completely.”
HELP TO PREVENT SUICIDE
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-TALK (8255) provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals.
The organization’s website is SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
This story was originally published October 13, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
