Wellness Day at St. Joseph’s School was a big hit by both students and teachers

 

Things were a little bit different at St. Joseph’s School on Wednesday, April 25 as students and teachers put down the books and played games instead. Grade four teacher Lori Simard spearheaded the Wellness Day event to help build relationships between students and their peers, and teachers and students. At the divisional level, the school board has a wellness group that is made up of parents, teachers and some students and they focus on different ways to be well. “We’ve talked about mental health, healthy eating and trying to increase physical activity.”

In the fall, Lori said that the school held a Wellness Symposium which included doing a school-wide survey and having students analyze the data to see which areas had weakness, in terms of wellness. “The data collected was like, how often are you active? How much television do you watch? Do you read books? How do you declare you are doing in school? There was probably 100 pages of it collected.”

With data in hand, Lori said that she, along with a group of 20 students, analyzed the data and made several discoveries. “We saw that students have high anxiety, high depression, and that relationships are a big issue. We made the connection. Do we think that students would have less anxiety, less depression and would they be willing to take more risks in school if they had that deep connection with their peers, and if they felt safe to share and make mistakes? We encourage kids to fail forward, but if you don’t feel safe then you don’t want to fail, so then there is embarrassment of, oh I failed. I messed up” said Lori.

That’s how the fun day became a reality.  The students involved in the data overview said that they wanted to have a day where both students and teachers could be just people being people, hanging out and getting to know each other a bit better. “They brainstormed activities, and we purchased what was needed and set it up. Essentially, students got to go around and do different things. We cancelled classes and we just had fun together.”

On April 20 the elementary students (grades 4-6) took part in their own fun day with teachers and on April 25 it was time for the junior and senior high (grades 7-12) population to get in on it. “We had an escape room, nail and string art, planting, chalk art and just a ton of fun activities.” Another neat activity was with Corry Pepper. She was set up on the stage and had the students try their hand at light painting with her camera. One by one, each group of students had fun moving around with glow lights and getting to see the final creation once the lights came back on.

“We as teachers often try to identify the issues but it was nice that the students were able to say, this is the problem, this is how we feel, and these are just some of the things we want to do. They said they just want to be people hanging out together” said Lori. “I think we need to encourage the idea that schools aren’t just an institution to fill a brain with knowledge. If they aren’t socially well, or they don’t have good peer relations or if they aren’t mentally well, then we need to fill all of the wellness spectrum too.”

Lori said that she hopes that the event can become a regular thing and hopes that other schools will give it a shot as well. “You’ll only get in what you put out, so if kids don’t really want to do it then they’re not going to get anything out of it. It’s the teacher’s job and the parent’s job to amp it up. It’s an expense but I think it’s a worthwhile expense to have. The students I’ve talked to have said they are having a lot of fun and feeling good.”