Om Schooling

Though Coppola admits it’s sometimes a struggle to get kids to take her Centered Self classes seriously, she emphasizes that “wellness is not phys ed.” She pushes her students to work hard, but pointedly does not assign homework, creating time for in-class journaling instead. Elwell, for his part, acknowledges the program would work better if he saw the same students all year long—or if he saw them twice as often each semester. With only eight wellness teachers for approximately 1,750 students, he says, sometimes “children are left behind socially and emotionally,” especially at a “pressure cooker” like South. (“I don’t think stress is excessively high compared with any other school in the area,” argues the school’s principal, Brian Salzer. “The fact is that students are going through a phase of life that has a certain amount of challenge, and there’s stress that comes with being a student in a community with expectations of the Ivy League.”)

When Dana Hall’s sleep specialist visited last fall, several students asked how they were supposed get more rest when their teachers always pile on the assignments (despite the 45-minute rule for non-AP courses). Senior Jacquie Maggiore, however, was impatient with her classmates, not the school. “If you chose to go to a competitive private school,” she says, “you shouldn’t complain that your teachers are giving you a lot to do.” Closing the books at 9 p.m. is simply unrealistic, adds senior Chandler Chase: “All those requirements that prevent us from getting the seven to nine hours of sleep we need for a ‘healthy and highly functioning lifestyle’ are what high school entails.” And despite Dana Hall’s good intentions, she says, “life isn’t changing.”

One Dana Hall mom says that the 45-minute homework rule rarely applies for her own daughter, and that the homework consideration that’s supposed to provide a free pass on nights with school events isn’t being granted, “at least not across the board.” Such complaints are not unique: Needham High dad Bob Stern says he has “not seen homework-free weekends happen” as advertised. Dana Hall school counselor Beth Nakamaru concedes the success of such initiatives “varies from student to student, but the teachers try really hard.” Part of the problem, she says, is figuring out how much time students spend actually working without distractions like IM-ing.

This winter, Dana Hall canceled an entire day of classes in favor of its third annual Ship Day, named for the campus’s Shipley Center for Athletics, Health, and Wellness. “It was a way for the girls to blow off steam and de-stress; it’s all about fun and letting loose,” says Liza Cohen, Dana Hall’s director of communications. Students could swim, work out, hula-hoop, play dodge ball and squash—even Wii—and attend a faculty talent show à la American Idol. But as much as students must have enjoyed watching their teachers’ rendition of “Oops!…I Did It Again,” Chandler and her friends would have just preferred the day off. “The idea is fun, and of course I would rather do that than go to classes,” she says. “But personally I would rather be sleeping.”

When I e-mail Will Fan, a Needham junior, to ask about an interview, he says he’d be delighted to speak with me—but “I have a violin lesson in a couple of minutes, a Chinese New Year’s to celebrate, and a history test to study for.” Luckily, he can spare some time during free period.

The Needham cafeteria is empty in the pre-lunch-hour lull. A flier on one wall announces a Valentine’s Day rose sale, reminding me how exciting—and nerve-racking—a high schooler’s social life can be. At the bell, students emerge from all directions. Nearly every girl wears Uggs, every boy tan work boots. Eventually a short, slim boy approaches, dressed in the suburban-teenage-male uniform: baggy khakis and a fleece. “Hi,” he says, “I’m Will.”

Will is on the Stress Reduction Committee. When it formed in 2007, its members, who include administrators, teachers, parents, and students, believed they were agents of change. Their mission was to help students understand and minimize stress—to reform some ingrained aspects of the high school experience. Over the following months, the SRC created the homework calendar, assigning specific testing days to each subject so that students wouldn’t get slammed with multiple exams at once; sent letters to students and parents containing suggested reading on topics such as sleep, stress, and college admissions; discussed Facebook and related time-sucks; and weighed the benefits of “meaningful homework” versus “busywork.” More recently, the committee rolled out a partnership with the Education Initiative at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, which is now conducting two four-week studies with approximately 130 sophomores and juniors. Participants meet nearly every day for 45 minutes to learn how stress affects them physically, emotionally, and behaviorally, and how to combat it. Rana Chudnofsky, director of the initiative, is teaching the kids tactics like diaphragmatic breathing, muscle relaxation, and counting backward from 10 to one. “The technique is simple,” she says, “[but] the impact could be profound.”

Despite all that, when the SRC assessed its progress this past January, the tone of the committee had changed. Members remain dedicated (last year Principal Richards attended the fourth annual Stressed-Out Students conference at Stanford University), yet their goals have been tempered by reality. “Many students understandably are discouraged by the several surveys that we have sent, [having not seen] any significant impact on stressors like their homework,” Will writes in an e-mail. “Researching school culture is a vital step to figuring out action, though it is a long process.” The committee also admitted that at times it had acted too quickly, specifically citing the removal of the honor roll from the town paper.

While Will continues to believe in the SRC’s mission, he adds that “ultimately it will be the students’ decision whether to help themselves or not.” He’s only partly right: Parents play a pretty big part, too. Even the most ambitious high schools can do only so much—at the end of the day, after all, the kid goes home. For their part, Katie, Nick, and Chandler say their moms and dads help minimize stress, but what happens when a child isn’t as motivated as these three? “Can parents tolerate that?” asks Larry Selter, a child psychiatrist at Mass General. “Or does that create such tension for them that it gets translated to the child?”

Obsessive parental worrying can preempt what children are capable of doing on their own, says Jim Hill, who’s been a counselor at Natick High for 30 years. “It can be counterproductive,” he says. “Adolescence is the time of life when kids make mistakes. If you’re always trying to prevent th
at, you’re actually interfering with some normal developmental stages.”

In one of his letters to Needham parents last August, Richards offered suggestions for helping lower their kids’ stress levels by dealing with how they feel about the college process. It’s about redefining success, listening to children, and finding the right fit, not the right brand name, Richards explained. Selter takes a more direct approach: “Parents need to take some yoga classes!” He’s serious—and Chandler’s mother, Ann Chase, can testify to the benefits of such a move. She recently started yoga and meditation. “I wake up in the middle of the night and worry about my kids…and it’s helping,” she says. “There are ways to clear out your brain.”