Wellness

It is important for us to directly combat personal, interpersonal, and community trauma, in addition to tending to the consequences of them (like the achievement gap that our academic supports work to address).

In other words, for students to be successful navigating their own wellness, we must treat the cause as well as the symptoms.

We do this through our Social Emotional and Relational Wellness class. We are currently in the process of developing curriculum for this class at all developmental levels. Mary Hossfeld, Guide Editor at EdSurge, reminds us that “social-emotional learning (SEL) empowers students with abilities that directly impact not only their academic lives, but their success and happiness as adults.”

In addition to our Social Emotional & Relational Wellness class, we will be hiring a dean of students in the coming years to use restorative practices in the community and their own student engagement, as well as oversees the implementation of restorative justice in studios, classrooms, and curriculum.

Restorative practices work to create accountability for repairing harm, rather than just inflicting punishment on those who do harm. According to Restorative Justice Colorado, restorative practices in schools “not only decrease suspension rates anywhere from 40% to 80%, but also resulted in a nearly 50% drop in absenteeism and a 60% decrease in tardiness.”

Read more about Social Emotional Learning on EdSurge here. Read more about restorative practices in Colorado education here.