Holistic Health
How two Flint Hill leaders are preserving our community’s mental and physical wellbeing from behind the scenes. In k-12 schools across the country, counselors and school health personnel work a bit differently from what you’ll find at Flint Hill. At other schools, for counselors, the lines between mental health and academic counseling are often blurred. Particularly in higher grades, school counselors often find themselves juggling the responsibilities shared by Flint Hill’s college counselors, advisors and mental health counselors. School nurses assess and intervene with day-to-day medical needs and support students dealing with chronic health conditions, but their work is not always connected to the efforts of their colleagues who are focused on student mental health.
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Flint Hill School
The National Survey of Children with Special Healthcare Needs has determined that 11.2 million U.S. children are at risk for chronic physical, developmental, behavioral or emotional conditions, and those numbers are on the rise. Schools need mental and physical health resources that are specialized, integrated and personal, and at Flint Hill, Director of Counseling Ilana Reyes and Director of Health Services Mary Hart are driving that work forward. For Reyes, coming to Flint Hill felt serendipitous. An independent school graduate herself, Reyes felt a particular connection to the private school world, despite spending most of her career working in
