Wellness

 

snowshoeingParker Academy promotes balance and wellness in order to achieve personal goals and objectives. Wellness encompasses academic, social, emotional, and personal successes. The purpose of the Wellness program is to teach the students skills in a variety of areas that will enable each Parker Academy student to succeed in school, at home and in life. The following explains the major components of Wellness at Parker Academy.

Wellness is having the academic, social, and emotional strength to achieve your personal goals and objectives.

Academic Achievement: Doing well in classes means providing the type of support and remediation necessary to meet expectations. It also means challenging the student to set higher expectations as they acquire the skills and attitudes that come with success.

Physical Health: Teenagers often ignore this vital component of their life. We believe they are setting patterns for life. In addition, to our required physical education classes, Parker Academy offers a variety of team sports and physical extracurricular activities to meet the needs of our student’s physical health.

Nutrition: Fueling the body with appropriate nutrients is an essential to good health. We ask that parents provide healthy lunches that limit sugar, caffeine and processed food. We only allow water as a beverage and provide healthy snacks in the form of fruit and vegetables.

Fitness: Our Fitness Director offers individual fitness plans to students, faculty and parents. These are integrated into our physical education program, science department and sports teams.

Hygiene: Hygiene is monitored and this includes appropriate dress.

Social Pragmatics: All teenagers need help understanding the complexities of social interactions with peers and adults. We establish community accepted norms of behavior for the school and work in small groups to teach and practice appropriate social skills. Unique to the process is that our School Counselor teaches these skills in the classroom setting bringing neurology to science classes and communication skills to the English classes.

Stress Recognition and Relief: Stress is normal and to be expected. Recognizing what causes stress and dealing appropriately and effectively with it is a cornerstone of our program. Recent brain research identifies how unmanaged stress interferes with learning and causes health problems. We begin each day by practicing “Mindfulness”. This includes teaching the students how to reduce their anxiety by acting “mindfully” of their surroundings and feelings. In addition, we begin each class and meeting with a moment of silence. We recognize how each individual responds to stress and practice different methods of intervention. Creating a calm, structured environment with clear expectations goes a long way to relieving stress.

Counseling: There are a number of components to our counseling program. Each student has a faculty advisor with whom he or she meets on a regular basis to discuss the progress of his or her portfolio and individual concerns. The advisor has weekly contact with the student’s parents. Our PhD-level school psychologist is integrated into our classes, but can also see a student on an as-needed basis. Finally, we have an adventured-based counseling component where students are able to get outdoors into the wilderness for an experiential, group-based retreat. During these retreats, skills, attitudes and motivation are explored as they relate to the individual and the group.

Mentoring: If a student has a particular strength and wishes to share it with other students, he or she has the opportunity to be a mentor. Supervised by a faculty member, the mentor may help out in a class or tutor another student. This helps to build on strengths and enhances his or her overall portfolio.

Parent Workshops: Parent meetings are scheduled on a regular basis for groups of parents who share similar concerns about their kids. These meetings are designed to give parents added tools to help them in raising their child. Experiences and challenges are shared with the group and our school psychologist with the objective of finding solutions.