Health & Wellness

At St. John’s, we believe each child should benefit from the strongest possible support – not just with their academic learning, but also with their physical, emotional, social, and mental well-being, which is equally important. To better ensure that we support the “whole child,” we have both a full time School Nurse and School Psychologist/Learning Support Specialist. We also believe in supporting our families with resources for their own health and wellness. Below you can find articles from our staff that we hope will better serve our community:

Blog Articles

Cultivating a Growth Mindset

Cultivating a Growth Mindset in Students
By Amy Patenaude, School Psychologist

For the 2021-2022 school year, St. John’s students are learning about how to cultivate a growth mindset and develop social-emotional skills across the three divisions.

What is a growth mindset?

The concept of “growth mindset” comes from Carol Dweck. According to her, people who have

a growth mindset think that our most basic abilities are developed through diligence and perseverance. When you have a growth mindset about something, you believe that your skills and creativity can increase with effort, asking for help, and being willing to make mistakes. We are able to get better at things like learning to read, writing our names, tying our shoes, and learning how to conjugate verbs in Spanish.In contrast to a growth mindset, there is a fixed mindset. According to this, one’s skills, intelligence, and abilities are fixed and can not be changed, even with hard work and practice.

Parents play a key role in shaping their children’s thinking and approach to challenges and learning and trying new things.

Here are 10 phrases that you can use with your child to help model a growth mindset way of thinking:

Mistakes are opportunities for learning and growing
I learn by trying new things
I can do hard things
I haven’t figured it out yet
I ask for help when I need it
Learning is my superpower
When I fail, I can say “I can’t do it yet” and try again
I grow my brain by learning hard things
I am brave and can try something new
I can learn anything!

Questions that you can ask instead of, “How was your day?”

What did you do today that made you think hard?
What new strategies did you try?
What mistakes did you make that taught you something?
What did you try that was hard today?

Kindness at SJE

Kindness at SJE
By Amy Patenaude, School Psychologist

Kindness is a cornerstone value of an SJE education! Kindness is defined as demonstrating generosity, friendliness, and consideration for others without thinking about what an individual will get out of doing something for another person. St. John’s students are encouraged to look for ways that they can help others without being asked or told to. We see acts of kindness every day at St. John’s. Students demonstrate kindness by waiting their turn in line, holding the door open for their teachers and fellow classmates, sitting with a classmate who is by himself or herself, and helping a friend who may have gotten hurt.

Kindness comes in many different forms. I like to live by the mantra of kind actions, kind words and kind thoughts.

This month students at the Primary Division Campus are learning about kindness as part of our character education program. During the lesson, students learned about what kindness means and gave examples of different ways that they have seen other students demonstrate kindness. Students played a game where they were asked to determine what behaviors demonstrated kindness by standing or kneeling down.

Students worked together to make a kindness chain. Students learned that when we show generosity, friendliness, and consideration to others, it helps others and creates a stronger, longer chain.

Wondering how to talk about kindness at home with your children? You can talk about different ways that children and adults can show kindness to others. You can encourage your child to look for ways to show kindness to others.

Healthy Habits for Back to School

Healthy Habits for Back to School
By Sharon Weaver, School Nurse

Hopefully you have all enjoyed your summer and had lots of quality family time. I know my favorite part of summer is the lack of routine and time to just be with family. Our children have hopefully had lots of time to relax, play outside, and just be kids. As we embark on the school year and get back to our routines, I thought I’d give you a few simple tips to help your children start off on the right track.

S: Sleep - I cannot stress enough how important sleep is to a successful day. Start re-introducing the bedtime routine now so it is not a shock to your child on the night before school starts. Turn off the electronics at least an hour before bed so your child’s mind is prepared to rest. A night of 8-10 hours of sleep yields a healthy body and mind that’s ready to learn.

C: Cardiovascular Activity/Exercise - Daily exercise is a must for our children. This doesn’t mean your child has to be in a fitness class or play an organized sport. Exercise can be playing tag, riding a bike, running around with a pet, or taking a walk as a family in the evening. Children spend far too much time watching screens and not enough time moving. Exercise relieves the stress of a long school day and in turn will help with our number one tip of getting a restful sleep.

H: Hygiene - As we start another school year amidst a global pandemic this is of utmost importance. Please encourage your children to wash their hands frequently. Hand-washing is the one thing we know definitely decreases the spread of germs. Also, if your child wears a face covering, please make sure they have a clean one each day.

O: Outdoors (fresh air) - Our children spend hours inside school buildings each day reading, writing and thinking. All of us have busy schedules, and our kids will have homework, but it is so important that we provide our children time outside. Fresh air clears the mind and often coincides with the all-important cardiovascular activity.

O: Optimism - Be optimistic. This, I believe, is very important in a child having a successful day or school year. Our kids need to hear that we believe they are going to have a great day and achieve great things. It’s a known fact that children become who they are told they can be. Let’s make sure we have successful children because of our optimism.

L: Laughter - This is my favorite tip. Laugh with your children. Humor helps with self esteem and friendship building. Laughing with your kids will benefit both parties by providing quality time. Laughing reduces stress and has a great healing power. Laughter is, in fact, the best medicine.

I wish you all a wonderful start to the school year and am happy to help with any health concerns your child may have.