This month marks seven years since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland left 17 students and staff dead in one of the worst school shootings the U.S has ever seen. The incident was a catalyst for statewide and national calls for policy change and ultimately led to the creation of what we in Lee County call Wellness Wednesdays.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, passed in 2018, tightened gun control while also providing a mechanism for teachers to be armed. But it also appropriated $69 million for increased mental health assistance in schools, which Lee County has used to implement the Wellness Wednesday curriculum.
Ten days each year, each period is shortened and students go to their assigned homerooms for 45 minutes of mental health instruction, delivered via a series of videos which cover topics such as signs of human trafficking, drug abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts, and a long list of other issues kids of these days may deal with. In this way, hopefully these problems won’t become all consuming and lead to a student doing something at the expense of everyone else around them.
The origin and intention of the program are obviously important, but few students seem aware of why the program was implemented, and The Panther Post struggled to find students who felt it was having its intended effect.
The effectiveness of the videos for their intended purpose – promoting mental health education – is widely debated. “They’re doing nothing, most teachers don’t care about the actual assignment and it becomes a free day which is more productive on the “wellness” aspect than the actual assignment itself,” Ivy Ligon states.
Fort Myers High School’s Syrien Judah agreed, saying “They do tasks that don’t get us to really care and we just do it because we’re asked and forget about it the next day. I don’t think they’re doing much. They do extremely rudimentary work unless it’s about human trafficking or something.”
While critique of Wellness Wednesday seems to be common, there are quite a few who enjoy attending it, though it isn’t for the purpose the District intended. “I normally just use the period itself as a study hall, if Wellness Wednesdays do anything, it’s just helping kids get caught up with their work. I can appreciate a nice free day. Most of our teachers don’t do anything during the shortened periods and I get to just chill out with my friends a lot of the time,” Pepper Dalton commented.
Ashley Guerra echoed these sentiments, saying, “I don’t really like the messages they try to explain since they aren’t doing it right, but I like the free time it gives me. We hardly ever get decent breaks to chill during school except with Wellness Wednesday, we get to just play on our phones or nap and I need a break like that during the day.”
While the original purpose behind Wellness Wednesdays was to spread positivity and kindness throughout the increasingly negative lives of teenagers in Lee County, it doesn’t seem to have achieved that goal for most students we interviewed. Many students want a change in what “Wellness” entails: possibly a genuine and unscripted message, true first-hand accounts from those with experience in the topics they cover, or even a way for students to decide what wellness means to them as individuals. But, it seems that for now, many students are happy to take a 45 minute nap for the period.
Jax Rivera of Bonita High School summed up the feelings of many: “Wellness Wednesday is a swing and a miss… It’s basically just a free period for students, as many just tune out the less than engaging video and play games on their phones… If we want to improve students’ mental health, there’s something better than putting on a video once a month.”
What that might look like, however, isn’t entirely clear. The 2022 Uvalde shooting claimed 22 more lives and captured public attention, and schools all over the nation are left grappling with how best to support students’ mental health and prevent further tragedies.
