Starting Young
Supporting wellness before college By Nichole Bernier TWENTY-FIVE years ago, schools like Belmont Hill and possibly the first time they are
when Head of School Rick Melvoin joined the staff of Belmont Hill, an independent boys’ school west of Boston, the school’s wellness landscape looked something like this. There was one part-time counselor who was also the crew coach and resident director for the small, five-day boarding program. He certainly cared about his students, but his form of counseling sometimes seemed to be on the order of “Sit down, settle down and behave.”
“I remember faculty saying things like, ‘We have that boy with family trouble hiding in the nurse’s office pretending he doesn’t feel well,’” Melvoin recalls. “And the counselor’s way of taking care of things was sort of, ‘Don’t be hiding now. Your job is to be strong, suck it up, and get to class.’” But the landscape has changed, for independent
public high schools around the country, in part because of the crush of demand colleges are experiencing for counseling services: The 2016-2017 Healthy Minds Study from the University of Michigan found that 31 percent of students screened positive for depression, and 26 percent for general anxiety disorder; 22 percent had taken psychiatric medication in the past year. Not surprisingly, high school educators are taking a hard look at what’s happening in the years immediately preceding college to prepare students for the transition and adjustment.
living away from home,” said Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. She is also co-founder of Challenge Success, an educational reform organization that partners with over 300 schools helping students with the academic, social, and emotional tools to thrive. “Not having a grasp of social-emotional learned skills — like communicating, self-regulating — will not make it easy to handle things when you get to college. We know that starting early and focusing on coping skills has a positive effect once kids go away to school.”
“Considering the mental health challenges that are being experienced in college, and counseling services pressed to the limits of their ability, some high schools are taking efforts to help kids address the kinds of issues they might experience at school, which is quite
Workload, stress, and sleep So much to do, so little time. There’s a widespread perception that the more high school students do — AP courses, a language or two, a sport or three, an a capella group or an instrument or both — the 13
