Supporting Well-Being With Intention
Top of mind for parents and educators is the current state of student well-being. We’re left wondering how to best support the unique needs of this generation.
How did we arrive at what some describe as an adolescent mental health crisis? Clinical psychologist and teen expert Lisa Damour, Ph.D., shares three observations: “Adolescent mental health was worsening before the pandemic; the pandemic was particularly hard on the mental health of teens; and, prior to the pandemic, we did not have the workforce we needed to care for teens.” (What Teens Need Now)
SAIS conducted a Pulse Survey of counselors at member schools in March 2024 to discern health and well-being issues impacting students. Counselors reported the top five issues are anxiety (80.08%), peer relationships (59.77%), academic stress (58.62%), coping & resilience (55.75%), and attention & focus (47.13%).
In March 2024, the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup, along with input from Damour, conducted a survey of tweens and teens, ages 10-18, gauging their emotional state. The survey found that “the emotional lives of preteens and teenagers are complex. Nearly all of these children (94%) say they felt happiness a lot of the prior day; however, 45% also felt stressed, 38% anxious, and 23% sad.”
To cope, adolescents mostly want their parents/guardians to listen, and they turn to music, video games, and friends (Walton Family Foundation, Gallup). SAIS school counselors echoed some of those same techniques, among others, for supporting student well-being: parental involvement & education (73.56%), referral system for ongoing external counseling services (71.26%), mindfulness & stress-reduction techniques (65.52%), advisory/homeroom workshops (51.72%), and physical activity (44.25%) (SAIS Pulse Survey, March 2024).
To extend the conversation, several SAIS member schools share the ways in which they support student well-being, be it through curriculum, intentional programs, or other services.
Connecting Students With Trusting Adults
In her research, Damour cites an increasing need for caring, trusted adults in schools, as well as more clinicians focused on teens and tweens. At the Wesleyan School in Peachtree Corners, GA, the counseling program is designed to be both proactive and reactive in supporting student wellness and well-being. With nearly 1,200 students in grades K-12, Wesleyan has doubled the size of the counseling department over the past five years, employing two counselors per division.
According to Assistant Head of School for External Affairs Jennifer Laing Copeland, “This increase in staffing equips the team to deploy proactive approaches like classroom lessons, division-wide presentations, and guest speakers; and keeps them well positioned to be reactive when individual and family support is needed.”
Another preventative approach Damour suggests for improving adolescents’ well-being is possessing a sense of purpose. For some schools, such as Wesleyan, a focus beyond one’s self is central to the school’s mission and values. “Wesleyan School’s mission statement includes ‘nurturing the mind, body, and spirit,’” says Laing Copeland. “That is a core part of how we approach student wellness. As a Christian school, Wesleyan believes that being in relationship with students is what we are called to do as Christian educators, and supporting student well-being is critical to fulfilling that mission.”
Intentionally focusing on student well-being, as well as employee wellness, are of such importance that the school listed these areas among their goals during the most recent SAIS accreditation cycle. Led by administration and the counseling team, the entire campus community continues to explore ways to further enhance student and employee wellness.
Emphasizing Total Wellness
In a presentation at Duke University, Damour shared that the goal parents often have for their children is “happiness” later in life. Damour asserts that “happiness,” or, rather, a balanced sense of well-being, hinges on strong, healthy relationships; good physical health; and a sense of fulfillment, with the notion that the work one does matters.
For the McCallie School, an all-boys day and boarding school in Chattanooga, TN, serving nearly 1,000 students in grades 6-12, the focus on educating the whole boy – heart, soul, mind, and body – is of utmost importance in helping graduates reach a sense of healthy well-being. “We emphasize wellness,” shares Thomas Hayes, McCallie chief of staff. “This includes not only a boy’s physical health but also his social, emotional, and spiritual well-being.”
Below are some of the ways McCallie incorporates wellness into a boy’s total experience.
Several years ago, McCallie moved the start of the school day back to 8:50 AM. Research showed that boys perform better with a later start to the school day. (Indeed, this is one of Damour’s suggested primary preventions for protecting adolescents’ mental health.) This allows students to get more rest and also allows more time and opportunity in the mornings to eat a healthy breakfast.
Most new students enter McCallie in either the sixth or ninth grade. In these grades, the school dedicates significant class time to cover age-appropriate wellness topics, such as transitioning to middle school, understanding adolescent changes (emotional, social, cognitive, physical), resolving conflicts, online safety, making smart choices (e.g. information on the dangers of vaping, smoking, alcohol, etc.), and considering what it means to live in community (specifically, taking time to meet each other and listen to who fellow students are).
McCallie also provides all ninth graders with an assessment through Mindprint to help the boys learn how they best absorb, process, and remember information. It helps them become better students, to study smarter, not harder. The goal is to help them realize their strengths and come to believe in their ability to manage the increased rigor that McCallie entails. As Damour asserts, teens live up, or down, to our expectations of them.
McCallie has five full-time counselors and three chaplains. The school’s counseling offices are strategically placed in high-traffic and boy-friendly areas to normalize and to incentivize visits to the counseling office. Every boy will meet with a counselor during his time at McCallie. The school has developed a network of off-site counselors to whom they can refer boys as needed for more specialized care. In the middle school, the leadership team meets weekly to share information and concerns about students.
At the middle school, McCallie prioritizes the emotional and social well-being of our students through the implementation of a “Homebase” system. Students are grouped into small teams of approximately 15 students who meet weekly with a dedicated Homebase advisor. These sessions provide a safe environment for students to form meaningful relationships with their peers. Key wellness topics covered in Homebase include online safety, the role of texting in relationships, understanding friendships, and maintaining balance as a student (e.g. managing homework, extracurricular activities, sleep, exam preparation, and helping students develop life skills). Complementing Homebase is the new House system. This program brings together students from different grade levels, offering opportunities for cross-grade bonding, leadership development, and healthy competition. The House system is a great way for boys to socialize and build a sense of community.
In the upper school, ninth- and tenth-grade students are divided into groups of 6-10 boys and assigned an advisor who meets with them weekly. As with the middle school, advisors seek to build relationships and guide students through various aspects of their upper school experience. This includes topics such as how to set useful goals for yourself, substances (including vaping) and substance abuse and how to seek help, developing balance in the digital world, sleep, nutrition, and reflection.
The entire ninth-grade class participates in a three-day retreat before the Labor Day Weekend. The time is meant to lay a foundation of strong connections between the students rising from eighth grade and new, incoming ninth-grade boarders and day students. Along with 20+ faculty, students have time to get away from the hecticness of an opening school year and really get to know each other.
Middle school gathers for chapel twice a week, and the upper school gathers three times a week. Chapel emphasizes the spiritual formation of the boys, with messages from faculty, students, and guest speakers that relate to wellness. For example, Dr. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary recently spoke in chapel on the topic of anxiety.
Evidence for how these messages are absorbed by students comes in the topics of senior chapel talks, many of which focus on the importance of friendships, the idea of it being okay to fail and regroup and try again, and the awareness of maintaining positive mental health and the importance of sharing hurts and concerns with trusted others instead of trying to manage life alone.
McCallie has a student health center that is staffed 24/7. The student health center provides medical care for the boys but also organizes vaccination clinics. The Student Health Center also provides a welcoming and safe space for boys. Recently, the school also added a room on campus dedicated as a quiet space to decompress if a student is walking through a particularly tough moment.
In 2024, the board of trustees adopted a new strategic plan. One of the plan’s strategic objectives relates specifically to wellness. Some of the anticipated action steps include
Students need faculty who also live and model healthy and balanced lives. McCallie has put in place various programs of support for faculty and staff.
Nurturing Through a Supportive Environment
For the Randolph School, in Huntsville, AL, the mission and core values are at the heart of student well-being: Seeking Truth. Building Character. Nurturing All.
“Nurturing all promotes student well-being by fostering a supportive environment where students feel valued and cared for,” shares Assistant Head of School for Academic Affairs Jerry B. Beckman.
The school’s core values of Respect, Trust, Relationships, Integrity, Curiosity, Empathy, and Growth Mindset further support student well-being, both academically and emotionally, for approximately 1,000 students in grades PK-12. As an example, in the middle school, one core value is highlighted each month, with “Mission Keepers” spotlighted. Mission Keepers are students who most embody the characteristics of that month’s core value, which is a program that not only celebrates students for living out the core values, but also encourages positive behavior and builds community.
The Randolph School counseling team from lower, middle, and upper school share more about some of the wellness services, programs, and curriculum they offer.
Student support teams are in place for each school division. These teams are comprised of administration, learning specialists, counselors, and nurses who offer a whole-child approach. Each team member provides their area of expertise – be it academic, behavioral, mental health, or physical health – as discussions focus on how to best support individual students.
Each division has one full-time counselor who supports students one on one, in small groups, and in the classroom through intentional lessons covering a range of social and emotional topics on a developmentally appropriate level. These lessons are to educate and normalize conversations surrounding mental health and overall well-being.
In the middle and upper school, there is dedicated time for advisory, where students explore social and emotional well-being-related topics. This is conducted through the middle school’s partnership with The Social Institute, while lower school supports student well-being through daily Responsive Classroom morning meetings.
The middle school House system fosters a sense of belonging during the middle school years. Each fifth grader is sorted into a House at the annual sorting assembly. The school then sponsors monthly House events, where House captains – a group of eighth-grade leaders – plan and execute games and other fun activities. Throughout the year, Houses earn points that culminate with the House cup ceremony on the last day of school. The House with the most points is presented with the House cup.
The Randolph School partners with Soundcheck Prevention Network to provide education surrounding substance misuse to students and families. The school also partners with local organizations to cover important topics like abuse and suicide.
Students complete yearly surveys that assess well-being, including Authentic Connections and the SAIS School Community Feedback survey.
A full-time safety and security officer supports student well-being by promoting community safety in many ways, including a lower school safety patrol program, where lower school students work directly with the safety and security officer to encourage safety.
The Randolph School values relationships and finds opportunities for cross-divisional activities. The Kindergarten/Senior buddy program is a long-standing tradition in which seniors are paired with a kindergarten buddy to foster connections between lower and upper school students. Learning Buddies is another program to connect lower and middle school students, through which first-grade students are paired with a fifth grader who they will keep as their buddy throughout lower school. Both of these programs provide tweens and teens a sense of purpose, that feeling of being “counted on” that Damour cites as being critical for adolescent well-being.
While the approaches are varied, schools are doing much in the way of supporting student well-being. Indeed, those spotlighted here are already implementing some of the strategies outlined by Damour: protecting sleep, surrounding students with caring adults, providing sufficient counseling expertise, giving teens real responsibilities, discussing healthy habits, and focusing on relationship building. As Damour asserts, teenagers belong to all of us, with the need for adults to both model healthy well-being and the full range of appropriate emotions, as well as providing the necessary support and resources for each unique situation.
The What and Why of Dashboards
