Collegiate School Students and Staff 'Link It & Live It' When It Comes to Wellness Education
Collegiate's innovative physical activity and wellness program encourages students and staff to live healthy, active lifestyles.
By: Nan Turner
Kathy Wrenn started off as a Physical Education teacher and volleyball coach at Collegiate School over seven years ago. Staying active and living a healthy lifestyle were always important to her, and something she wanted to share with her students, but she never imagined how it would take off.
In 2005 Collegiate had a Wellness Day for the middle school students. They shut down classes and all the teachers and students wore active wear instead of their usual dressy attire. Students visited stations where they learned about nutrition, played ultimate Frisbee, and did other sports. At the end of the day everyone shared in a picnic on the lawn with a menu centered on healthy food.
Everyone had a great time but they didn’t quite catch the wellness bug. Wrenn, however, was determined to create a lasting culture of health and wellness at the school.
“We have to read a book every summer and the past two summers the book has been about innovation,” Wrenn said. “I always thought if I ever got the chance this is what I wanted to do.”
A few years later Wrenn got her chance. In the spring of 2009 Collegiate held an “Innovative Challenge” competition. Wrenn and her colleagues put together the idea of a school program that was heavily run by students and focused on healthy living called “Link It & Live It”. The program ended up winning the challenge and Wrenn was presented with funding to start the club.
“We started with the middle school team three years ago,” Wrenn said. “We handpick the students from the seventh and eighth grade because we want them to already live the lifestyle.”
'Link It & Live It' has now expanded through the upper and lower schools, with some of the upperclassmen acting as mentors to younger students. Since the club was so successful, the administration asked Wrenn to create something similar for the employees. This also gave her a new position, working part time as P.E. teacher, and becoming the Wellness Coordinator.
Wrenn began work on a Wellness Portal, an online program where employees can track everything from their physical activity to diet. In January the program was tested on a group of about 10 individuals. After seeing what work still needed to be done, Wrenn tweaked it. She wanted to make sure the portal catered to every division and department at Collegiate because she didn’t want anyone to feel like they had been left behind by the new progressions.
“We rolled it out this fall,” Wrenn said. “I’ve been surprised at how many people and how they’re using it. We’ve got 100 people signed up, but probably 60 that are very active.”
The Wellness portal offers a section where users can enter a recipe and find out the nutritional facts about the meal. They can then share recipes with other users as well as their own personal workout plans.
“You can create a workout and share it,” Wrenn said. “I’m collecting workouts from our weight room coaches. There’s even an app you can get that lets you see it in real time.”
Another aspect of the portal is the communication it allows for teachers to have with each other.
“It’s so encouraging with the social networking because you can send each other messages and even get them through your email,” Wrenn said. “As a staff we don’t interact that much. We eat lunch during lunch periods and that’s about it. It wasn’t a benefit we anticipated but it’s been fun.”
In the spring the staff plans to do walking challenges in teams. They’re planning to walk the Buttermilk Trail in the coming months and a walking Christmas light tour to celebrate the holidays, ending with dinner in the Fan.
But the competitive spirit doesn’t end there; currently the staff and faculty are participating in a contest dubbed “The Biggest Winter Loser.” Participants will measure how many inches they’ve lost based on three different spots on the body and track their progression on the portal.
Soon Wrenn will be unveiling a competition to see who can make it to one million steps in 61 days. This contest was inspired by Robert Turner, a kindergarten teacher who would take his students out to walk the track when they would get antsy.
“One little girl would always ask, ‘Mr. Turner do we have to walk the track?’” Wrenn said. “And two weeks later she was saying, ‘Can we go walk the track together?”
Turner achieved the goal in 41 days, recording 37,000 steps on his pedometer the last day.
Even with all the new emphasis on the Wellness Portal, 'Link It & Live It' has continued to thrive.
“What I’ve learned is you have to be patient,” Wrenn said. “Kids want to have ownership in something. They own it and that’s what makes it successful. Kids say, ‘I want to be in Link it & Live it’. They’re selected for it so they want to be good role models.”
Wrenn is passionate about what she does and is excited when she gets emails or hears comments from parents about how their children are now teaching them what not to eat. She said the next phase of the program will be to focus on nutrition at home and work with the school's parents association.
“The sooner they create good habits the better,” Wrenn said. “My own children go through phases, but as long as they come back to it that’s what we want; that way even if they leave it, it’s ingrained.”