Health and wellness has been a top of mind consideration at Dublin School over the previous few years. We’ve been working steadily to build capacity around mental health services, invested heavily in our health / wellness infrastructure, and have incorporated health and wellness related education into our Student Life Program so that students are thinking about these topics early and often. 

Lanessa Davis P’17 has played a huge role in opening space on campus for conversations around wellness related topics. Most recently, she introduced Wellness Circles, a program run during flex-block every other Wednesday that brings members of the Ninth Grade together for conversations about sexual and reproductive health. 

When Wellness Circles were first being introduced, Lanessa and Co. surveyed the student body, asking what topics they felt should be addressed through the program. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of establishing a program that provided comprehensive sex education, a topic that received little-to-no mention at the time. And while sex education is the core element of the Wellness Circle curriculum, there are frequent detours into other topical areas, because, as Lanessa frames it, “you can’t talk about sex without talking about all the other stuff.” 

This past week, for example, students met with registered dietician Tiffany Calcutt P’25 to discuss nutrition, disordered eating, and the complexities of establishing a healthy relationship with food. 

As Lanessa explains, the tacit agenda of Wellness Circles is to get students feeling comfortable having conversations that are not particularly comfortable. That is, of teaching vulnerability and tolerance towards awkwardness while establishing norms of discourse where that vulnerability will be met in good faith.