A Project Designed With Wellness in Mind

Last week, Acton-Boxborough seventh-graders and their parents spent a respite from their everyday lives at Project Wellness, the annual day-long conference at Merrimack College in Andover that promotes physical and emotional wellness for students and their families.

Now in its tenth year, Project Wellness was developed in response to Emerson Youth Risk Behavior Surveys that revealed some “concerning behaviors” surrounding certain high-risk areas, including stress, lack of sleep and poor eating, said Craig Hardimon, principal of

“Clearly everyone understood there’s a lot we can do within schools regarding education, but that’s limited. Parents and guardians play an even greater role than the schools,” said Hardimon. “So it was thought to create Project Wellness to help build, reestablish, and strengthen lines of communication between children and their parents and guardians.”

While Hardimon acknowledged the difficulty for some families to attend the event together, he said its very apartness from everyday life is a key component to its success and that a large majority of the school’s 480 seventh-graders do attend with a parent, guardian or other family member.

“This model is really the strongest way of getting full participation, getting full involvement—getting away from school, and getting away from work,” he said. “As a parent, it’s hard to step away from your work day. But there’s value in stepping away from the work day and from the school day and going to a new location together with our kids, and really exploring the topics of the workshops."

As the years have passed, workshop offerings, many of which are facilitated by Acton administrators and child-development experts, have expanded to a current slate of more than 30, ranging from the popular “Personal Safety and Self Defense” and “Chill Time--How to Manage Stress in Your Life” for students to the adults-only “Surviving as a Single Parent” and “Bad, Mad or Just Plain Sad.” Parents and students attended a total of three workshops, and at least one together.

And then there’s what Hardimon calls the “unofficial fourth course”—the drive home.

“I find out from parents after the fact that they often have really good conversations with their children about the day—what did they like, what did they not like, what did they find interesting, what did they find amusing,” said Hardimon. “It’s a good moment for the kids and parents to have a really good conversation.”

And different families experienced those moments at different points surrounding the event. Maureen Ryan-Friend said lines of communication began opening up well before the fact, as soon as she and daughter Julia sat down together to choose their courses.

“(Selecting the workshops) was a great opportunity to work with my daughter in a way that opened up conversations on many topics,” said Ryan-Friend, who called the event “a really interesting, well-spent day.”

“A lot of the value of the day was building community in the Acton schools and showing our kids that we don’t only value them for their success, but that we support their wellness as individuals,” said Ryan-Friend. “I’m proud to be part of a community that takes a day out to teach our kids emotional wellness and intelligence.”

While the event is currently funded through fundraisers, such as—at which Hardimon played with his band, Specific Gravity—corporate sponsors, and a $40 ticket price for each student/parent pair, “We hope it’s eventually rolled into appropriate (school) budget,” said Hardimon.

New to the program this year was keynote speaker Dr. Elizabeth Englander, director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC) and professor of psychology at Bridgewater State University, and a past consultant for R. J. Grey who’s spoken to various groups of A-B parents about internet safety, cyberbullying and other related issues.

“We were excited to get (Englander) as a speaker,” said Andrew Shen, assistant principal at R.J. Grey. “We wanted to find a forum to introduce her to a larger group of parents, a captive audience, and logistically it worked this year.”

During Englander’s presentation for parents, the students attended one by Chris Poulos, a bicycle stunt rider and longtime Project Wellness participant who uses music and commentary, audience participation, and extreme stunts to convey messages of anti-violence, positive thinking, and success.

“Historically, the students have really enjoyed his combination of bike stunts and messages about making good choices, facing challenges, capitalizing on opportunities,” said Shen. “We have always thought that it's nice that his messages are similar to the themes discussed earlier in the day, but clearly in a different format.”

Written testimony from parents also supports the success and value of the event, with a recent survey that went back four years indicating that the “vast majority” of those who responded “felt Project Wellness is a valuable use of time,” said Hardimon.

“(The respondents) felt they continued to have interesting conversations with their kids after the fact, they learned a number of interesting things or were guided down another path to consider and that it was a very valuable use of a school day,” Hardimon said. “After nine years, survey results showed that people really still saw its value.”

Alex Jarostchuk, who attended Project Wellness with his son, Nicholas, said he found the event “very, very beneficial” and that it “very much exceeded” his expectations. As a first-time participant—his wife attended with the couple’s older children—Jarostchuk said he was impressed by both the large selection and quality of the workshops offered.

“It definitely opened up dialogue, especially about technology,” said Jarostchuk, referring to Englander’s presentation. “I was prompted to ask (questions) about cyberspace that we hadn’t discussed before.”

And opening up such conversations among families, or just between kids, is what Hardimon says the day is all about.

“It’s healthy for kids to start separating from their parents at this time…it’s developmentally what they’re supposed to do. But (Project Wellness) is a time for them to come together,” said Hardimon. “I’ve known kids to (act like) they thought it was dumb, but three months, six months later you hear them still talking and reflecting on it. If they’re thinking about it a day, a week, a month, a year later…it’s really done its job.”