Waynflete School (Maine)

“We believe that diversity is one of the conditions of excellence for our school.”

Enhancing and Validating a Homegrown K-12 Health Curriculum and Culture of Student Wellbeing

Challenges

  1. At the time of Elevate’s partnership with Waynflete, Waynflete had just conducted a review of its own K-12 health and wellness
    curriculum. This home-grown, integrated review was thorough and took an in-depth look at their academic support and middle school seminar programs.

  2. Waynflete decided to take everything a step further by finding experts in the field who could take an objective look at their internal health and wellness review. Through their searching, they came across Elevate and immediately recognized they had the expertise to validate their findings and provide recommendations to enhance program implementation and buy-in.

Going into the partnership with Elevate, Waynflete had already identified key areas of improvement, including rightsizing the ratio of counselors to students, investing in a Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum, and hosting interviews with students qualifying for extra support to determine the best way to aid them without making assumptions about what kinds of support they needed.

Further Context

Assessing Needs

Elevate and Waynflete took a holistic approach to their audit by first having a preliminary discovery period of review where Elevate analyzed Waynflete’s internal report, conducted onsite interviews, led focus groups with students, faculty, and staff, and provided management of committees, communications, and schedules. Through the review process, Elevate helped Waynflete understand where the gaps were in the services they provided to their community.

Identified Needs

  1. Increase transparency and communication between departments to ensure continuity of scope and sequence of the curriculum

  2. Develop assessment tools for the evaluation of goal successes

  3. Incorporate student perspectives more through receiving student feedback 

  4. Integrate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs into the Health and Wellness Programs after reviewing the DEI programs more in-depth

  5. Create a sustainable Health and Wellness position to help organize the curriculum for each school year and act as the point person across departments.

Recommendations

Based upon the needs identified from the review, Elevate recommended ways to strengthen Waynflete’s health and wellness program, integrating student support services more seamlessly, helping to reduce stigma or "othering" that students might feel, and revising sustainable programs for the long term. Elevate also brought forth experience navigating challenging topics and diverse perspectives, which supported them in identifying with both Waynflete's student body and work around the 'windows and mirrors' concept

Implemented Recommendations

Invest in a Social and Emotional Learning Curriculum that best fits the needs of Waynflete’s community 

Create a curriculum for the long term, enabling successful program delivery and financial sustainability, no matter who was teaching the specific courses.

Re-design multicultural supports grounded in cycles of student-reported input

Increase the visibility of and strengthen programs, such as their academic support services program, middle school seminar, and health and wellness

Successfully plan for hiring additional counselors and seminar teachers, including a SEL Programming Coordinator

Moving Forward

At the time of this write-up, Waynflete has plans to build a health and wellness center within the next few years and the SEL program they implemented based upon the review remains a sustainable priority and in practice.

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