Eudemonia Health +

Dear Parents,

Beginning this year, the Eudemonia curriculum will provide expanded content to third, fourth, and sixth form students. For each of these form years, students will engage in skill-based content intended to bolster resiliency, decision-making skills, executive functioning skills, and preparedness for the stress of a teen’s social and emotional life. Our goal is to provide evidence-based curriculum instruction that prevents health risks for students. We chose evidenced-based programming that is scientifically demonstrated to achieve positive health outcomes. In addition, the curriculum incorporates key characteristics that research has identified in programs found to be effective in changing health and risk behaviors in adolescents.

The results of the Independent School Health Check survey, which was completed by Hill students in October 2019, indicated a need for more education in areas of health and sex education for students attending The Hill. This would include mental health education, drug and alcohol education, sexual health education, and other education on mindsets and beliefs that lead to healthy living and lifestyle choices. Anecdotally, in different venues students have reported feeling undereducated in these areas and have voiced the need for more formal education.

In researching our peer schools and their health education approaches, it was clear that most schools have adapted this type of educational programming as an academic class with the thought that preparing students for academic success is enhanced by education to understand their physical, sexual, and mental health.

Third Form Curriculum:

Third form students will participate in a course once a week for the fall term.  This class will include instruction from the Counseling Center, Learning Education Coordinator, and the Writing Center. Content will focus on executive functioning skills and tools that help students manage, control, and regulate their ability to plan, organize, and use working memory more effectively. Additionally, other self-regulatory topics to improve the transition to boarding school life will be introduced.

Fourth Form Curriculum- Eudemonia Health+:

Fourth form students will be engaging in Eudemonia Health+, an enhanced one-term course consisting of 30 class sessions, offered in the winter and spring terms. This course will address aspects in three main areas: social/emotional health, sexual health, and drug and alcohol prevention.

 1. Social and Emotional Health Education:

The HealthSmart curriculum meets National Health Education Standards (NHES) and gives students the functional knowledge and essential skills required to achieve social and emotional health literacy. This curriculum has lesson-based objectives and assessments that are based on the knowledge and skill expectations in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool. The content of social and emotional learning will focus on understanding healthy emotional regulation, conflict management skills, mindfulness practice, and suicide prevention education.

2. Sexual Health Education:

The Rights, Respect, and Responsibility curriculum is a sexual health education curriculum that fully meets the National Sexuality Education Standards (NSES). The NSES outlines the foundational knowledge and skills students need to navigate sexual development and grow into sexually healthy adults. The content during these sessions will address both the functional knowledge related to sexuality and the specific skills necessary to adopt healthy behaviors. Topics will include information on the following:

• Describing the human sexual response cycle, including the role hormones play.
• Analyzing how brain development has an impact on cognitive, social, and emotional changes of adolescence and early adulthood.
• Differentiating between biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression.
• Comparing and contrasting the advantages and disadvantages of abstinence and other contraceptive methods, including condoms, as well as educating on emergency contraception and describing its mechanism of action.
• Describing common symptoms of and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.
• Evaluating the potentially positive and negative roles of technology and social media in relationships.
• Describing characteristics of healthy and unhealthy romantic and/or sexual relationships as well as defining sexual consent and explaining its implications for sexual decision making.
• Explaining why a person who has been raped or sexually assaulted is not at fault.

3. Drug and Alcohol Prevention Education:

Fourth form students will be participating in a dynamic prevention program focused on marijuana and electronic delivery (vaping). Panaptic is an eight-session online course totaling close to two hours of prevention education. This digital delivery prevention program will strengthen our robust Health and Wellness curriculum by increasing your teen’s understanding about the short- and long-term risks on emotional/social health, physical health, as well as impacts on academic performance. In addition, Panaptic programming includes parent education that explores the science of marijuana and vaping and how to have productive family conversations around marijuana/electronic delivery prevention. Students will analyze the relationship between using alcohol and other drugs and other health risks, such as unintentional injuries, violence, suicide, and sexual risk behaviors.

Sixth Form Curriculum:

Sixth form students will participate in a curriculum offered once a week in the spring term, focused on transition to college and adulthood. Topics will reflect more advanced sexual health education and drug and alcohol prevention education that reflect real life challenges faced during the transition to college. Additionally, topics will include paying rent, budgeting, and managing credit, along with financial literacy and sexual assault prevention education. Students will hear from high school graduates who have successfully navigated their freshman year of college.

National Health Education Standards:

This new curriculum will be using NHES to provide the framework to build this health education platform.  The NHES details what students need to know and be able to do in order to achieve health literacy by setting performance indicators around the functional knowledge and essential skills required for adopting and maintaining healthy behaviors. The class will use state of the art health education information that reflects a growing body of research that emphasizes the following:

1. Teaching functional health information (essential knowledge)
2. Shaping values and beliefs that support healthy behaviors
3. Shaping group norms that value a healthy lifestyle

We are fully committed to providing the platform and space for students to learn and explore relevant and important aspects of their bodies, minds, and overall health during these important teen years.  This enhanced curriculum will be taught primarily by Counseling Department faculty, which includes a master’s level educator who holds a degree in Positive Psychology and several licensed clinicians.  Other lessons will be taught by our learning coordinator, medical director, director of the Writing Center, and various teaching faculty, depending on the topic. We will be tying in the existing Flourishing data to class topics to continue the connection of wellbeing for students.

We are here to support any questions you may have regarding content mentioned above. Please contact Director of Counseling Lisa Roethling at lroethling@thehill.org or Medical Director Kristin Spencer at kspencer@thehill.org with any further questions.