The Wellness and Life Skills program contains three core areas of focus. The first is teaching students to identify emotions, perceive and recognize others’ perspectives, solve problems and manage emotions. The second focuses on mindfulness. Using a research-based curriculum, students are taught skills which build resilience to stress and anxiety, and develop a positive mindset in both school and life. The third focus is preventing, recognizing and identifying bullying behaviors, and students learn that bullying behaviors can be both physical and/or relational in nature. We emphasize the need for kind works, inclusionary practices, avoiding mean teasing and reporting bullying behavior.

Students begin each day by saying “The Husky Promise,” and we emphasize the importance of living the principles it describes. Morning meetings foster a sense of community through greetings, sharing and group-building activities. Students at this level continue to focus on learning skills, empathy, emotion management and problem-solving. Students gain skills to help themselves as learners: how to focus their attention, listen carefully, use self-talk to stay on task and be assertive when asking for help with school work. The basic concept of empathy is continually reinforced as students learn to deal with conflicting feelings, listen actively, express concern, accept differences, make a complaint, calm down, recognize anger signs and “anger buttons,” respond to playground issues and deal with peer pressure. Our goal is to help students develop into caring, self-confident members of the classroom community.