Sage Setty ’21 relaxes while petting Oscar, a Bernese Mountain Dog.
The Choate community spread out across campus to dance, meditate, pet dogs, and play drums for seventy minutes last Tuesday afternoon. October 10 was All School Wellness Day, when students and some faculty gathered in different locations to participate in many varieties of wellness-promoting activities.
Options for wellness activities for students varied and included many different facets of wellness. Dr. Katharine Jewett, Director of Curricular Initiatives and administrator of Choate’s Lifelong Wellness Committee, said, “Therapy dogs and meditation and yoga were one type of activity a lot of people took advantage of. Some people wanted to be outside and do something like hiking.” She continued, “The creative writing and free time to work in the i.D. lab was another way to explore intellectually. The seminars we had were on thinking of wellness in lots of different ways: financial wellness, positive psychology, nutrition were other ways for people to be well, too.” Students received an email a week and a half before Wellness Day allowing them to choose their activity. Dr. Jewett said, “There was a variety, and we tried to offer up a lot of opportunities for people to get what they might need, because I think that wellness is very individual; it depends on the person.”
“The structure that we’re using as the basic format for the curriculum for this wellness program for all four years is the wellness wheel,” said Dr. Jewett. Many Sophomore Seminar students will be familiar with this concept already. Dr. Jewett explained, “It teaches you the different aspects of a person’s health that they need to be thinking about all the time: financially, socially, physically, emotionally, and so forth.”
Choate plans to continue Wellness Day over the course of the year, having one every term. Dr. Jewett said, “The main feedback we got was to do it again, and maybe do it for a little longer next time.”
All School Wellness Days are a part of a four-year wellness plan created by the Wellness Committee, one of whose goals was addressing the problems associated with Sophomore Seminar. “We heard from students and faculty that Soph Sem needed to be looked at and that maybe it wasn’t getting across everything that it needed to get across. Students felt that it was missing some things that were really important,” said Dr. Jewett. She explained, “Student council and groups like SAGE and CORR, as well as faculty, said, why don’t you create a four-year wellness program that’s part of the air that people breathe at Choate, instead of a formal graduation requirement?”
Feedback among the community varied. Gigi Sherbacow ’20 said, “I had movement and play. It was super weird. Some of us were uncomfortable. I thought that it was weird and I thought I could have used a free.”
Other responses were more positive, as seen through the all-school survey. Dr. Jewett said, “Most of the responses were really positive. Many students and faculty would like a little bit more time devoted to this. I hope that everyone understands that we all need to be well in order to be athletically successful, artfully successful, and academically successful, so I hope and I know that people had a positive reaction to it, and I hope they will take something away that serves them more long-term.”
Aurelie Temsamani ’20 enjoyed the activity, but had one problem with it: “I think the wellness activities could have been organized a little better. All of the spaces were filled really, really quickly, and I think they could have multiple groups of one thing, so that it wasn’t if you didn’t get your first choice, you won’t get something that you like at all.”
Students enjoy drawing outside during Wellness Day.
Dr. Jewett addressed this exact problem, saying, “One thing I already heard is that when we send out the link for choosing the sessions, we should make sure it’s not during a class period, because that’s not fair to some people.”
The Lifetime Wellness Committee has been in place since last March. It is comprised of eight faculty members: Dr. Chris Diamond, Health Center Director; Dr. Hollie Hinderlie, Wellness Coordinator; Ms. Char Davidson, Counseling Director; Ms. Julia Brown, Mr. Sam Doak, Mr. Zach Kafoglis, Mr. Will Morris, and Dr. Jewett. “The committee was charged by Mr. Stanley and Ms. Levesque as part of our curriculum review that Ms. Levesque and I have been leading over the past couple of years,” stated Dr. Jewett.
The Wellness Committee looks forward to improving and augmenting these Wellness Days throughout the rest of the year. “I’ve had students and faculty propose new ideas for sessions for next time. I’m excited to see that it’s generated a lot of excitement among students for what we can do next,” said Dr. Jewett. “We want to be as inclusive as possible. We had some staff participate this time, and we’d love to have more. This was our first run and we weren’t sure how much space we had in every different location we used, but I think next time we’ll be able to add even more people to each of the locations. That will be great to have even more people participating.”
