Implementing a Wellness Curriculum

The pandemic shed new light on the importance of physical and emotional health for all of us, especially for our young students. Now more than ever, children need to learn how to navigate complex emotional and social challenges.

The Studies Weekly Well-Being program and the upcoming Health and Wellness curriculum is designed to help students navigate the road to adolescence and adulthood in a structured, safe, and easy-to-understand format.

Wellness programs help kids in every part of their learning because “social, emotional, and cognitive capabilities are intertwined — they are interdependent in their development, experience, and use,” according to a NCSS wellness webinar. Teaching standard subjects — math, science, history, etc. — is insufficient and less meaningful without the social-emotional learning behind it.

The NCSS webinar pointed out that youth need social and emotional skills to face the following challenges :

• Physical safety due to disease and violence
• Racial injustice
• Economic security
• Social unrest
• Anxiety and depression
• Increased rate of suicidal thoughts

The students in your district need Studies Weekly Well-Being, so you can arm your students with the social-emotional skills they need to meet the challenges of today. Studies Weekly Well-Being also prepares students more fully for the challenges of adult life.

With all the pressures educators already experience, it’s difficult to add one more thing to the To Do List.

But Studies Weekly Well-Being is easy for teachers to integrate into their teaching routine, and is designed in a way that allows schools and districts to implement it school-wide and have every classroom discussing the same topics at the same time. Or it can be implemented with a customized and individualized approach meeting the needs of individual teachers and students. Watch the How to Implement Well-Being video below.

After purchasing the wellness curriculum, teachers and district leaders can use the Well-Being Instructional Planning Tool below to more effectively and implement it in any classroom situation. This tool can help teachers plan and organize the course information, and decide how they’re going to use it alongside their regular lessons. It can also be used in conjunction with scope and sequence documents to help districts, teachers or sites determine their own customized implementation of the Well-Being curriculum.

Here are two possible options for teaching Well-Being course material:

If you only have a few minutes each day, or maybe 10-15 minutes a few times a week, you can implement the essential parts of the curriculum during centers, gathering time, as a starter activity, or as a closer activity. Use this approach to turn classroom disturbances into teaching opportunities.

Each month, you should identify the targeted behavioral indicator to invest in by month. You may use counselor, school, or needs assessment data to drive these selections. Use the Studies Weekly Well-Being Scope and Sequence document to align the content to support your targeted behavioral indicators.

As you work with students in any capacity, consider investing 10-30 minutes at least 3 times per week to discuss topics like growth mindset, resilience, conflict resolution and critical thinking in a preventative way. Dedicating instructional time to teaching well-being curriculum will yield a great return on investment, and you will see behavioral changes and improvements in mental health for both students and educators alike. Teachers who use this approach can help students prevent tough challenges before they happen.

Intentionally plan time for teaching well-being principles throughout the week. This type of well-being instruction should take place 5 days a week for about 15-30 minutes.

Download PDF to use

Well-Being How-To Video

Test Out Studies Weekly Well-Being for Yourself

Give the students in your care the ability to cope with difficult life events, excel in the modern workplace, and make healthy, lasting relationships. Give them Studies Weekly Well-Being.

Sign up for a free trial and try it out for yourself today at online.studiesweekly.com