Mental Health Professionals Help Students Explore Overall Wellness

	Kristen Stanton is the District-wide School-Based Mental Health and Wellness Coordinator for the North Syracuse Central School District. Along with a team of mental health professionals throughout the District, Kristen has been working to provide wellness activities for all students.   For the month of January, the team set a theme of “Pathway to Wellness” which explores the six areas of wellness: environmental, emotional, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual. Kristen said, “Sometimes when people think of wellness, they think only of physical health but overall wellness is so much more.” A Wheel of Wellness helps student see the six different areas of wellness.   For the “Pathway to Wellness” theme, some special activities took place at North Syracuse Junior High School and Cicero-North Syracuse High School. Kristen said, “We had students analyze the 6 dimensions of wellness and take a survey regarding where their strengths were and where they felt they needed improvement.  Students were then able to spin the prize wheel where everyone was a winner!”   For the theme at the Elementary level, some physical education classes learned about the 6 dimensions of wellness and participated in fun activity stations around the theme.