Despite the variety of visits, Renazco’s statistics students discovered through the project that the Wellness Center is still underutilized by the entire student body. “What they found was that the proportion, or percentage, of kids that are going to the Wellness Center is actually small, based off of their random sample, but that the small sample use it regularly,” Renazco said.

In a random sample survey conducted by Renazco’s statistics students, 56.25 percent of students had never visited the Wellness Center in the past month, while about 41.67 percent had visited one to five times and 2.08 percent had visited more than five times. Some of the reasons cited for not using the Wellness Center were not needing to or not thinking it was useful.

Singh frequents the Wellness Center for her meetings, as well as just to grab tea and snacks. Since it opened in 2016, she has been pleasantly surprised by the number of students who use it. “This school year, especially, I’ve heard more people talking about wanting to go see the counselors in the Wellness Center or at least talk to them and know that that’s an option,” she said.

According to Singh and the Wellness Coordinators, the number of people using the Wellness Center has steadily increased each year since its opening. Wellness Coordinator Genavae Dixon hopes to eventually reach the entire student body. “I think we could always have more students here,” Dixon said. “I think that we want all 2,000 students to at some point walk in the Wellness Center and feel safe doing so.”

SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LITERACY AND FUNCTIONALITY

Under different forms and names, social-emotional learning (SEL) programs at Gunn have evolved and changed in response to student feedback. Currently, Social Emotional Literacy and Functionality (SELF) is a district- mandated program aimed not only towards improving wellness but also helping students develop soft skills and connections with adult mentors.

Some students have argued against the value and impact of SELF. “It’s boring, and I personally just haven’t gotten anything out of it, especially last year and the first semester of this year,” the same anonymous student said. They have not attended SELF this semester, citing its ineffectiveness as the reason for doing so.

SEL Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA) Courtney Carlomagno believes that SELF will become more accepted by the student population in the future. “It’s a big change, and every change takes adjustment,” she said. “I also think right now it’s hard that only two grade levels are in it, and it’s not all four years yet. Freshmen and sophomores see juniors and seniors having free time or choice time in Flex, and that’s been difficult.”

Many of the complaints against SELF are also related to time commitment and stress levels. Carlomagno wishes to emphasize how the goal of SELF is to help students develop social skills while concurrently promoting their wellness. This additional curriculum makes it different from academic classes. “Social-emotional learning is about the development of soft skills: learning how to communicate, learning how to problem solve, learning how to work in groups,” Carlomagno said. “It’s kind of like the hidden curriculum so, yes, there is a wellness piece, but I think it’s important to note that SEL is really more skill-based, and it’s about learning how to interact with the world around you.”

Like Sources of Strength, SELF also aims to connect students to adult help. SELF mentors are currently set to stay with the same cohort group for all four years, establishing a secure mentor-student relationship. So far, SELF survey results have shown this to be effective. “What [TOSA Tara Firenzi] and I like the most is that the data shows that students are identifying as being more or as connected to their SELF mentor as their regular teachers,” Carlomagno said. “That’s really the biggest deal to us, because they see [their SELF mentors] once a week versus their other teachers, which they see three times a week.”