Wellness 101

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Starting on the Path to Wellness

Program Overview

Wellness 101: Starting on the Path to Wellness is an innovative wellness program designed to help students develop critical skills for lifelong success and optimum well-being.

IWE developed this program to fill a gap in wellness education for teens because existing wellness curricula generally focus almost solely on tactics and action. Students may comply for the duration of the lesson, campaign, or challenge, but eventually falter because sustained action is the product of an internalized self-change process. Wellness 101 starts with where students are “at” and guides them purposefully through an evidence-based self-change process. Students learn how to align their thinking, feelings, and behavior with goals that are meaningful to them and use proven strategies to achieve positive, lasting change.

Program Components

IWE provides the training and PD through interactive online learning activities, live and recorded video- and audio-conferencing, printed, hard-copy workbooks, consultation, and onsite training. Student peer-coaches then lead wellness classes that feature interactive journaling using printed, hard-copy workbooks.

Each unit is sold separately as a stand-alone course. The material for each topic includes:

  • 2-hour interactive, online course

  • 16-page participant workbook (downloadable pdf) for each participant

  • 24-page teacher’s manual (downloadable pdf)

  • 60-minute orientation/teacher training webinar

  • Online outcomes survey for participants

  • Formal outcomes report (downloadable pdf)

Methods

Addressing Your School’s Biggest Problems

Wellness 101 comprises eight different units. Each is designed to change behavior by boosting motivation; increasing student readiness; showing student how to harness personal, social, and environmental factors that promote change; strengthening commitment; and building self-efficacy. Scenario-based learning activities give students practice responding to relevant and realistic challenges that are common to today’s teens including stress, bullying, risky behaviors, unhealthy lifestyle practices, and difficult interpersonal relationships.

Each unit features activities to help students answer three questions of their greatest, often unspoken, concern:

  1. Who am I?

  2. What am I going to do?

  3. Am I going to make it?

Evidence-Based Methods from NREPP Proven to Help Your Students

Every unit emphasizes practical skills rather than abstract concepts or theories. The strategies, models, and tools taught in the program are evidence-based, listed or adapted from programs in the US National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP). They include cognitive-behavioral and solution-focused approaches, positive psychology, personal journaling, and behavior-change models developed by leaders in the field of behavioral science.

Flexible Curriculum to Suit Your Needs

Wellness 101 offers schools maximum flexibility because each unit is independent and can be offered alone or in different combinations. Units can be incorporated into core content classes, electives, free periods, after school and summer programs, guidance and counseling sessions, and college-and-career-prep classes. The units may be taught in sequence or any other way that best suits the unique needs of an individual class, cohort, or school.

The program is delivered to students online and is accompanied by a workbook that reinforces the online learning. Teachers receive a teacher’s manual and discussion guide to maximize the bene t of the online portion of the program. The program also measures student achievement and participation.

How Is Student Achievement Recognized?

Recognition and celebration are key features of the program. Students earn certificates of completion and digital badges for their participation in the wellness course.

Program Components

IWE provides the training and PD through interactive online learning activities, live and recorded video- and audio-conferencing, printed, hard-copy workbooks, consultation, and onsite training. Student peer-coaches then lead wellness classes that feature interactive journaling using printed, hard-copy workbooks.

Each unit is sold separately as a stand-alone course. The material for each topic includes:

  • 2-hour interactive, online course

  • 16-page participant workbook (downloadable pdf) for each participant

  • 24-page teacher’s manual (downloadable pdf)

  • 60-minute orientation/teacher training webinar

  • Online outcomes survey for participants

  • Formal outcomes report (downloadable pdf)

Unit 1. Wellness Counts: Be the Best You Can Be (The Mind-Body Connection)

This unit introduces students to a holistic model of wellness and helps them recognize that many different factors contribute to their overall well-being. Students conduct self-assessments in each of ten dimensions of wellness and create a personalized plan for maximizing their wellness in all dimensions. Wellness and well-being enable people to live healthy, happy, rewarding lives Ten different factors contribute to well-being and they all count Measure where you’re at in each of 10 dimensions of wellness Make a plan for hitting the target for overall wellness

Unit 2. What I Say Counts (Social Wellness)

Students learn fundamental principles of interpersonal communication and civil discourse, and practice active listening skills to forge healthy relationships based on honesty, respect, and empathy, as they apply at school, home, and on the job. How to talk so people will listen How to listen so people will talk Words that help, words that hurt How to accept what someone says without having to agree How being assertive works but aggressive doesn’t

Unit 3. What I Tell Myself Counts (Psychological Wellness)

Students discover how self-talk (positive or negative) affects their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Students learn and practice a cognitive-behavioral model to recognize and evaluate their self-talk and transform negative thinking into positive. The good and bad of self-talk Growth mindset Basics of the ABCDE model

Unit 4. My Feelings, Good and Bad (Emotional Wellness)

Students learn critical concepts about feelings and how to recognize and manage their feelings, particularly difficult feelings including stress, anger, worry, and fear. Emphasis is on acceptance, self-compassion, and managing feelings honestly and responsibly. Facts about feelings Feelings and your body Strategies for coping with difficult feelings

Unit 5. Living by Strong Values (Spiritual Wellness)

This unit helps students to identify values that are important to them, assess how their behavior aligns with their values, and take steps to achieve goals that reflect healthy, strong values. What are values to live by? (What is honesty, responsibility, caring, respect and why does it count?) Connections between values, actions, consequences Do your actions match your values? Setting and achieving goals to live by strong values

Unit 6. Changing for Good (Behavioral Wellness)

This unit introduces the science of behavior change and gives students a structured model they can use to make positive, lasting change in their lives. The model emphasizes a person-centered approach, helping students to take action based on where they are “at” in the change process, and use personal, social, and environmental strategies to support their change goals. Students can apply the self-change model they learn in this unit to other aspects of their lives, too. How do people change and make it stick? Myths, fables, and misconceptions about change Change happens in stages Personal, social, and environmental factors count Small steps lead to big rewards

Unit 7. Healthy Choices (Physical and Nutritional Wellness)

Most students recognize that healthy eating and physical activity is important, but many do not know how to make manageable changes that are sustainable. This unit applies the science of behavior change to healthy eating and physical activity. What is healthy eating and activity? Why should you care? Monitoring and measuring what you eat and how active you are Setting goals you can achieve Strategies to make change stick

Unit 8. Financial Responsibility (Financial Wellness)

Students learn key skills to manage their money rather than allow money to manage them. Budgeting basics: what it is, why, how Earning, saving, spending Wants vs needs Friends or foes, social influence and support Making money management pay off long-term Answer Here