A Year in Wellbeing at TAS: Upper School

Over our 5 week winter break, we are encouraging our community to rest and recuperate. As part of this theme, we're bringing you four posts about how different corners of our community have made progress toward the well-being goals laid out in our strategic plan. We hope you enjoy!

By E-chieh Lin, Director of Inclusion and Wellbeing

Read our Year in Wellbeing at TAS: Curriculum & Parent Education

Read our Year in Wellbeing at TAS: Lower School

Read our Year in Wellbeing at TAS: Middle School

Along with the Lower and Middle School, our Upper School is working to apply the Collaborative for Academic Social, Emotional Learning (CASEL) Framework. The framework has five competencies called the CASEL 5, Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-Making.

The Upper School works to help students thrive in an academic environment by finding a balance for social, emotional, mental, and physical health. The weekly advisory structure was implemented to intentionally build a welcoming and safe environment where students build strong and caring relationships with each other and their advisors. Our hope is that these relationships give students the confidence to share their thoughts, perspectives, and ask questions knowing their input is valued.

Throughout 2021-2022, the Upper School faculty worked with Sea Change, an online coursework program that guides advisors through common themes, current research, and best practice for advisory programs. The six-part online module focused on advisory fundamentals, the inner work of the advisory, the school context, understanding our students, and the group experience. Class deans and associate principals worked together to create professional development methods and instruction based on the modules to turn research into practice.  For example, in February 2022, advisors worked on building connections by creating rituals and traditions, practicing different activities that could be done in each advisory meeting. The activity would remain the same while the questions posed would be different. This engaged the students in developing their social awareness, self-awareness, and responsible decision-making in the CASEL 5.

For the last three years, the Academic & Personal Counseling team has been implementing well-being lessons during advisory. These lessons talk about mental health, wellness, anxiety, and self-care, touching on behaviors that impact mental health for students like stress, sleep, anxiety, relationships, competition, possible warning signs, and mental health resources. These lessons also talk about anxiety, strategies for coping with anxiety, and include a grounding exercise to stay in the moment. Most recently, these lessons address topics such as what is self-care, how and when to ask for help, and why we don’t ask for help. These lessons help students develop responsible decision-making and self-awareness in the CASEL 5.

Recently, the Honor Committee, a student committee sponsored by the Dean of Students, crafted an advisory lesson focused on gratitude. The Honor Committee delivered the lesson last week. The lesson asks all students to think about things they are grateful for and ways they would like to show gratitude to the people in their lives like their teachers (Lower, Middle, and Upper School), cafeteria employees, parents, and more. The gratitude notes are encouraged to be delivered by the note writer; however, Honor Committee members will deliver the notes if that is the preference of the note writer. The Honor Committee is also planning an activity prior to exams to help students with stress.

To help students understand outside pressures on personal well-being, the Upper School health curriculum covers substance abuse and vaping in ninth grade, which is reinforced by our partnership with substance use prevention specialists from Prevention Solutions, a part of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. In October, 2023, Prevention Solutions worked virtually with all of our students in Grades 8, 10, and 12, to promote awareness of drug addiction and alcoholism, teaching students how to recognize the early warning signs of substance abuse, and empowering young people to make responsible choices regarding drugs and alcohol. These lessons and workshops help to build competencies in responsible decision-making in the CASEL 5.

Finally, in the Upper School health curriculum, students also learn about a variety of well-being topics like healthy-active living, emotional and mental well-being, safe relationships, the benefits and risks of online technology for building relationships, cyberbullying, unhealthy relationships, and more. In these classes, all ninth- and tenth-grade students are learning and practicing all of the CASEL 5 competencies in their health classes.