Wellness 101

Starting on the Path to Wellness

Photo Credit: Charlotte May (Pexels)

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 improve Resilience, 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:

  • Who am I?
  • What am I going to do?
  • 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.