The focus on health and well-being is multifaceted and collaborative.

By Claire Ferris ’21

It’s no secret: CA students are stressed. Despite the mental and physical tribulations that the first few months of COVID-19 posed, students were exposed to a short schedule with the first prototype of a flex day introduced on Fridays. Though students were notably excited by a schedule that more aptly fit their sleep schedules, the Upper School administration team felt like – while there certainly was potential in such a schedule – it would need to be refined and tweaked before the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year.

In fact, changing the Upper School schedule was a thoughtfully calculated action several years in the making, stemming from a desire to prioritize the health and well-being of the CA community. As Ms. Holland, Assistant Head of the Upper School, explains, “we gathered a lot of data from our students and parents over the past few years about their health and wellness and then sought input from our country’s leading experts about schedule changes we could make – and then we were compelled to put what we learned into action and change the CA schedule. Mr. Follet, as you know, has ‘student wellness’ as one of his core values.” Ms. Holland explained that Mr. Follet sent her to a week of training in January in Delaware to spend time with experts who focus on creating student-centered schedules. She accounted that fewer class switches, more in-depth class time, fewer classes per day, and a later start would all contribute to a healthy community and aid teenage learners in their academic endeavors. Thus, this year’s schedule in all of its Flex Day glory is a result of months, even years of administrative, teacher, student, and parent input as well as dedication to a healthy learning community.

Ms. Jones and Ms. Eason, Upper School Deans of Students, also weighed in on how they’ve seen student health and wellness evolve. “Cary Academy has always been a stressful environment, and I’ve seen a definite increase in the stress. But I’ve also seen an increase in students’ desire to do something about this stress, and to find different activities that help with their stress level,” Ms. Eason remarks. As familiar sources of support for students, Ms. Eason and Ms. Jones feel – while masks are necessary from a public health standpoint – that masks have actually made their job of emotionally supporting students more difficult. Ms. Eason explains: “we typically can see if someone is hurting (even if we don’t know them) through facial expressions and body language, but with the masks, it’s sometimes too hard to make those determinations, which impedes our ability to intervene.” Though COVID-19 has made emotional support more difficult, the new schedule has provided several benefits – many of which come from Flex Day. Though, as Ms. Jones says, they’re still working out the logistics of Flex Days, she believes that “giving students a way to create their own day and their own time gives them that creativity and an outlet that they didn’t have before, which is always a good thing.” Ms. Eason echoes her remarks, adding: “I think that when something benefits the teachers – as Flex Day does – it carries into also helping the students.”

Making sure that CA peers feel supported and healthy in their daily endeavors has been even more difficult during the COVID-era. Ms. Monds (the US counselor) believes, though, that the community is doing a stellar job of harnessing the COVID-induced virtual world on wellness. “I will say that we’ve been able to be very creative in supporting our students, and we’ve implemented lots of different strategies that we wouldn’t have pre-COVID,” she explains. For example, new parent wellness groups and staff and faculty wellness groups have been created, and resources are abundant as members of the CA community share ideas on how to support everyone’s needs. “There’s a lot of collaboration that’s happening behind the scenes on wellness – I collaborate closely with the deans, the advisors, and the department chairs. Because it’s such a priority and because we want to make sure every child has some kind of support and resources. I think health and well-being will always be a huge priority for CA,” Ms. Monds says. Parents’ openness and willingness to ask for help prompted Ms. Monds to want to create a website for resources. She’s currently working with Ms. Mandy Dailey to place all wellness resources – resources for students, parents, and faculty – in one place on Blackbaud, to make them as accessible as possible.

One of the many examples of COVID-related innovation is the newly-formed CALM club, or Cary Academy Living Mindfully. Created in response to the emotional stress of COVID-19, as well as the stressors of daily CA life, the club is led by current seniors Nisma Said and Sadie Daley, as well as current junior Alex Lim. “We co-founded CALM club to give students a place to talk freely about their mental health struggles and overall just de-stress after a long week,” Said remarks. The club has been meeting to have open discussions, sharing “roses, buds, and thorns” – a way of describing the highs and lows of one’s day – and learning about the effects of COVID-19 on overall stress. The club has also spoken to Ms. Monds about her educational and career path, and they are currently planning a virtual reality meditation trial for interested students. “We know that talking openly about mental health can be difficult to do at times, so we hope that our environment fosters safe and collaborative discussion,” Lim adds. Said notes that, “we hope members feel like they are not alone in whatever they may be dealing with internally, whether they decide to share during club time or not.”

Said’s message reflects the general message of the Upper School community: despite a myriad of changes and uncertainty due to COVID-19, CA hopes its community will not hesitate to seek help and understanding, whether that be through resources provided by Ms. Monds, or attending CALM’s next meeting.