Working On Wellness

 

Wellness assemblies. We’ve all been to them. Sometimes they drag on forever and other times we are left quoting them weeks later. Every year the counseling department works to find or create an interesting presentation on issues we students face every day. In an effort to learn more about the process of organizing these assemblies, the Talon talked to Director of Counseling and Guidance Mr. Kirk Purdy.

“We pick topics that we feel are important, relevant for teens, and not so specialized that it involves only a handful of students on campus,” he shared.

As times change and society evolves, what was relevant five years ago is not always as pertinent to today’s youth. While the counseling department does not organize assemblies based on events happening at the time — the topics are picked at the beginning of the year — they still find a way to ensure that the subject matter is useful to the students.

Mr. Purdy explained that, for the counseling department, as long as some of the students are able to learn and benefit from the assembly, it is considered a success.

“We know that there is never going to be, no matter what you do, a certain amount of students that are not going to feel like [the presentation] is worth it,” he explained. “But if somebody gets something out of it then we’re happy.”

While students definitely benefit, generally speaking, from wellness assemblies, of course not every assembly is going to be perfect.

The problem that arises with some of the smaller speakers is that most of the time they do not have videos online showing their talks, as is done with national speakers. As a result, the counseling department depends on word of mouth and their own research when looking for smaller speakers.

“You don’t know what you’re going to get sometimes,” admitted Mr. Purdy. “You can hire a speaker and you think it’s going to be a great experience and then when you actually have the presentation you might not feel that way when you get to the end and that’s always a little risky.”

The most recent wellness assembly was on mental health, Meera Khaira (’18) discussed the relevance of the topic and success of the assembly.

“The assembly we just had was very informative and intriguing,” she recalled. “But it wasn’t executed as well as it could have [been].”

Some students, Meera included, found that the lack of multiple speakers created a lull and made it harder to listen attentively. In addition, Meera thought the presentation seemed as though it was something you would see and hear in class, which made it a little boring.

As informative as they are, wellness assemblies are not always going to be enthralling and groundbreaking. The fact of the matter is we are vaguely familiar with a good portion of the information we are given. However, we can only benefit from paying attention.

Though it may be easier to zone out, it is indisputable that the information shared during these assemblies is both relevant and important. While the delivery of such information may not always appeal to your particular learning style, tune yourself in anyway because you are bound to learn something new.