A Conversation with Kellye Shipman, Director of Counseling, New Braunfels Independent School District, New Braunfels, Texas
When New Braunfels Independent School District (NBISD) set out to bring Primeros auxilios en salud mental para adolescentes (MHFA) to students, there was a sense it wasn’t just another one-off program.
Kellye Shipman is the Director of Counseling for NBISD, which serves about 10,000 students from preschool through 12th grade north of San Antonio.
Texas mandates that school staff must be trained in trauma-informed care, and New Braunfels ISD uses MHFA Juvenil — which teaches adults how to help young people ages 12-18 who may be experiencing a mental health or substance use challenge — to answer that need.
For Shipman, that signaled a gap.
“We trained our adults what to look for and how to support our kids, but we weren’t training our kids how to support each other,” Shipman said.
The clear value of the program made it easy for the Board of Trustees and principals to approve Teen MHFA, she said. But starting a mental health training program is no easy feat.
“Mental health training is a big endeavor for a school to take on,” Shipman said. “As good an idea as Teen MHFA was, I was like, gosh, how can I do it? We’ve got about 3,200 high schoolers.”
Building a Sustainable Program
Instead of training all 3,200 teens at once, they decided to roll out Teen MHFA in the fall of 2025 gradually by beginning with freshmen. Fresh out of middle school, the first year of high school is often the most challenging — and training them in Teen MHFA gives them valuable skills right away.
“Right off the bat, they’ll learn who their counselors are, where they are, and that it’s okay to ask for help,” she said. “It’s just something that our freshmen will do. In the fall of their first year, they are going to be equipped with Teen MHFA. Within four years, everyone on campus will be trained.”eople stay connected to work, school, family and community.
Inside the Classroom: Engagement and Immediate Impact
Once Teen MHFA classes began, Shipman saw something that surprised even seasoned educators: consistent student engagement.
“The kids were receptive,” she recalled. “They were answering the questions. They were giving their input. They weren’t avoiding the lessons at all, and they looked forward to them every week. They thought it was really valuable.”
“Sometimes you feel like these kids are not listening, but they are. Even kids that will put their head down and look like they don’t want to learn — by the end they’re raising their hand and answering questions,” Shipman said. “They hear it. They absorb it in their own way, and they show you that they’re able to apply it.”
The most powerful outcome was that students used what they learned to seek help for themselves and for others.
Right at the start, a student asked Shipman for support. For a long time, the student said, she had been struggling with mental health challenges, but she didn’t know how to ask for help.
“That very first week, we were able to intervene immediately with a student who asked to see somebody,” Shipman shared. “She said, ‘I’ve been feeling this for a long time and no one’s ever asked me.’”
Another student recognized the warning signs of suicide
In yet another moment, a student recognized the signs of mental health challenges in their younger sibling after learning about the signs in Teen MHFA. The family received support and the student’s sibling got help that same day.
After each session of Teen MHFA, students complete an Exit Ticket, which provides a chance for them to reflect on the lesson and signal if they’d like a counselor to follow up with them.
In that first fall of Teen MHFA at New Braunfels ISD, three Exit Ticket check-in requests resulted in a suicide intervention protocol.
