Well Beyond Academics: ACDS's New Middle School Wellness Curriculum - Aspen Country Day School

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Well Beyond Academics: ACDS’s New Middle School Wellness Curriculum

February 12, 2025

The Middle School at Aspen Country Day recently introduced a new social-emotional learning (SEL) program aimed at providing students with the vital opportunity to explore personal and social development—an essential component of a well-rounded middle school education. The social emotional Wellness class is designed to help students expand and strengthen their personal and emotional skills. The five core competencies at the heart of SEL work are: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness.

Each Wellness class focuses on guiding students towards improving their self-awareness, strengthening their relationships, and broadening their understanding and implementation of the Aspen Country Day core values of character, respect, responsibility, community, and perseverance. The lessons are targeted at early adolescents, typically spanning ages 10-14, to cover the transitional period between childhood and adolescence that is marked by rapid growth and development. During this period, teenagers experience various changes, including physical maturation, cognitive advancements, and emotional and social adjustments. Using the ACDS Middle School developmental milestones as a guiding framework, the course of study is thoughtfully crafted to help students improve their self-awareness, strengthen their relationships, and practice coping and regulation strategies.

Top 10 Skills Needed for Middle School

  1. Making good friendships 
  2. Negotiating conflict 
  3. Managing a student-teacher mismatch 
  4. Creating homework and organizational systems
  5. Considering others’ perspectives
  6. Self-advocating skills  
  7. Self-regulating emotions 
  8. Cultivating passions and recognizing limitations 
  9. Making responsible, healthy, and ethical choices 
  10. Creating and innovating

from Middle School Matters by Phyllis Fagel

ACDS has teamed with Well Beyond Academics, an organization specializing in wellness education, to help illuminate and emphasize students’ rights, responsibility, and respect for self and others. Ultimately, the purpose is to equip students with the life skills required to care for their own emotional and physical health, as well as the health and well-being of others, while engaging in relationships ranging from platonic to romantic.

The curriculum is committed to normalizing and destigmatizing the reality and experiences of today’s youth by putting research into practice. It takes necessary but potentially awkward, scary, stressful topics and turns them into fun, engaging opportunities for learning, conversation and connection. Comprehensive sexuality programming, mental health curriculum, substance use education, and suicide prevention are delivered dynamically and infused with mental health coaching to build a healthier generation one community at a time.

Aspen Country Day School firmly believes that a solid social-emotional learning and wellness education leads to better academic performances, increased feelings of connection, safety and support at school that helps foster teacher and peer relationships. Through preparation and repetition, students develop, enhance and adjust the tools they need to set goals, manage emotions and make good decisions and gain independence.