Sphere of Support: Health and Wellness on the Hilltop
By Rozanne Rosenberg, Assistant Director of Communications
A holistic focus on children’s growth and development is ingrained in Hackley’s core values. That extends to the health and wellness initiatives and programming on the Hilltop. After all, we espouse that “character is above intellect” and, as such, “that idea of who we are, how we treat others, how we make decisions, is all part of [health and wellness] at this school,” says Renee Pabst, Chair of Health Education.
Health and wellness at Hackley centers on five areas: emotional, social, cognitive, spiritual, and physical. The School strives to develop and present a curriculum that reflects and represents our students, while also providing them with opportunities to experience varying perspectives. Nutrition, physical and mental health, substance abuse prevention, bystander intervention, healthy relationships, social-emotional learning, and community building are at the heart of health and wellness at Hackley.
Building Character and Community
In the Lower School, teachers incorporate the Second Step social-emotional learning program with support from Lower School psychologist Dr. Amanda LeTard, who also coordinates the monthly “Snack & Share” series on Zoom and the character education program—this year’s virtues are thoughtfulness, appreciation, responsibility, and perseverance. Throughout the year, five assemblies highlight the virtues—a Name That Virtue Gameshow written by Dr. LeTard and Roni Kanter, third grade teacher, kicked off the series this year. Teachers also incorporate the virtues into messages and meetings, and Lower School librarian Anna McKay creates booklists for families featuring titles connected to the virtues of focus. Optional activities and assignments are available to students, as well, and bulletin boards in the Lower School provide a visual reference.
“Second Step is a program that really helps build students’ skills related to growth mindset and goal-setting, problem-solving, emotion management, and empathy and kindness,” says Dr. LeTard. “This year, Mr. Kilgarriff, our technology teacher, is also working on pushing in to tie some of those topics to the digital space as well as the physical-interpersonal space. So, for our older students, we’re looking to talk with them about empathy and kindness in a developmentally thoughtful way, not only on the playground or in the classroom, but also in the digital space.”
Snack & Shares help to build community and provide leadership opportunities for third and fourth graders. “I tell them it’s kind of like our own little TV show,” shares Dr. LeTard. Students introduce either a speaker or a community-building activity, such as reflecting on “What is the best part of school so far?” There is also always a “Shout Out,” which allows students to call out members of the community who are doing good things, like enacting the virtues or being a good friend.
Fostering Curricular and Divisional Connections
Finding interdisciplinary connections with other content areas, as well as creating ways for students to connect with each other, are a major focus of the health and wellness program. One example of this is the seventh grade health curriculum. “We rearranged the health curriculum in seventh grade so that we now start with nutrition and talk about MyPlate. This way, the seventh graders can do a service-learning project with the first grade, because we realized that it mirrored what first graders were doing in their social studies curriculum,” Ms. Pabst says. “Seventh graders learn the curriculum and go into first grade classes and run different meetings around MyPlate, trying different foods, and making healthy plates. They have lunch with their first grade buddies, and the first graders share about their farm trip with the seventh graders.”
In eighth grade, Ms. Pabst collaborates with the English teachers to connect discussions around healthy and unhealthy relationships to the book students read, A Step from Heaven by An Na. The book features a collection of vignettes about a family of Korean immigrants, told from the point of view of the eldest daughter, and addresses issues of abuse and domestic violence. “Given Renee’s extensive training and expertise in these areas, we began bringing her into classes about three or four years ago to give the students a greater understanding of the characters, their experiences, and their actions in the novel,” says Trevor Ogden, Middle School English teacher. “This also dovetails nicely with the eighth grade health curriculum, which addresses healthy and unhealthy relationships toward the end of the school year.”
The ninth grade peer advisory program offers our newest Upper Schoolers the opportunity to connect with more seasoned eleventh graders. Ms. Pabst works with the eleventh graders to prepare them for conversations with their ninth grade peer advisees. They meet two times per cycle and together engage in fun bonding activities; discussions around academics, including how to utilize resources on campus and how to prepare and organize themselves; and, with adult support, conversations around belonging and inclusivity, as well as how to be an upstander, someone who speaks up or takes action when they see injustice.
“The idea that ‘united, we help one another’ is what our ninth grade peer advisory program is based on,” Ms. Pabst says. The program also addresses drug and alcohol abuse and resistance skills, with Ms. Pabst teaching the ninth graders about the science behind addiction and the eleventh grade peer advisors helping to guide conversations around resistance skills. “With peers telling them, it lands differently,” adds Ms. Pabst.
Supporting Stress Management and Holistic Health
Throughout their Hackley journey, students are supported with managing stress and taking care of their mental health. In the Lower School, they have access to “Calm Carts,” which contain different tools—breathing balls, timers, paper to write and draw, fidgets—for students to use to develop their emotion management and regulation skills. “The Calm Carts have on them things to help students take a break from where they are and to practice those emotional regulation skills we want them to learn,” explains Dr. LeTard. “They give the teachers some tools easily at their disposal to help support the students.”
While a designated “health” class is part of the curriculum in seventh, eighth, and tenth grades, health and wellness discussions are woven throughout advisory periods in the Middle and Upper Schools. To address wellness topics in a holistic way, students hear from various members of the community. Athletic Trainer Kayla Simpson, who is also a dietitian, meets with the seventh grade students to discuss intuitive eating and how to build a healthier relationship with food. “It’s about helping students understand how to listen to their bodies and understand that we shouldn’t group foods into ‘good’ and ‘bad’; rather, it’s more about how we energize our body and having nutrient-dense versus nutrient-void foods,” adds Ms. Pabst.
With this in mind, the curriculum moves on to discussing body image and eating disorders, including a new addition about apps and how social media influences body image, with the support of Middle School psychologist and Support Services Chair Dr. Anne Weissenberger. The focus is on supporting students with reaching out for help for themselves or a friend and reinforcing the supports that are available within and outside Hackley.
Conversations around stress management center around what is typical versus atypical stress and what happens to our bodies when stress becomes unhealthy. The key, again, is helping students to recognize signs of anxiety and depression in themselves and in others, and to support them with reaching out for help. “We want to promote this idea that it’s OK to ask for help,” adds Dr. Weissenberger. “Whether it’s a teacher for a math problem, the learning specialist for how to best study, or if something’s not going well emotionally or for your friends—who to go to. By the time they get to the Upper School, my wish for all of them is to know how to self-advocate and to be comfortable doing so.”
To help with this effort, Dr. Weissenberger also started a monthly video series called “The Counselor’s Corner,” where she offers a tip for the month and gives students actionable steps to take—for example daily stress-reducing practices or different ways to express gratitude.
Inviting Experts in the Field
Much of the education around health and wellness is provided by Hackley faculty, though, at times, outside experts are invited to enhance the program and share their work with students. One such visit is the JCK Foundation, which speaks with the eighth graders about suicide prevention, mental health, and how to recognize signs when students are feeling overly anxious or depressed. Hope’s Door leads discussions with eighth and tenth graders around healthy and unhealthy, or abusive, relationships. The organization uses different scenarios to help students recognize and have conversations around what makes a relationship an unhealthy one and how to prevent abuse. Substance Abuse Prevention and Education consultant Michael Nerney met with Hackley’s Health and Biology faculty and Support Services team in November 2021 to discuss the adolescent brain and marijuana. He also presented to Hackley families a session on “De-stressing the Brain and Helping Students Find Balance” as part of the HPA’s Hilltop Series, and he met with peer advisors to answer questions about the adolescent brain, mental health, stress, social media, and addiction.
The feedback for the visits has been overwhelmingly positive. According to Ms. Pabst, students enjoyed the JCK Foundation presentation and said they learned a lot, felt engaged, were more motivated to help a friend, and felt that the presenters connected with them. Regarding Hope’s Door, an eighth grade student had the following to say: “I thought that the presentation by Hope's Door was extremely informative, and it helped me gain a better understanding of what an unhealthy relationship [or] friendship might look like. I now know how to handle it if I ever find myself in a situation like that.” Both faculty and peer advisors enjoyed the presentations by Mr. Nerney, with peer advisors stating that it helped them think about how to present the information regarding substance abuse to their peers.
Making It Possible
Much of the health and wellness programming at Hackley has been made possible in part by The Michael and Diane Lowry Endowment for Health and Wellness. Mr. and Mrs. Lowry P ’93, ’95, GP ’29 have been committed to health and wellness at Hackley throughout Mr. Lowry’s years as a Trustee and dating back to Mrs. Lowry’s service as a president of the Hackley Parents’ Association. After nearly 40 years of volunteer and philanthropic leadership, in 2021, they established this endowment, which helps to ensure Hackley’s ability to educate students around issues of health and wellness in perpetuity, providing generations with the skills and mindset to lead a healthy, well life.
As Ms. Pabst notes, the goal of the health and wellness education programming at Hackley is to provide students with “the empowerment to make the best decisions” and to help them know that there are people in their lives—both at Hackley and beyond the Hilltop—who will support them and who care about them. Ultimately, we want our students to feel included and accepted, to uplift and support one another, and to have the tools and understanding to lead safe, healthy, and balanced lives.
This story first appeared in the Hackley Review Winter 2022-2023 edition. To see the full digital issue, click here.