Kent School held its first Wellness Day on Saturday, April 22th to “shake off” some of the stress as students approached the final indicator of the year. With the aim of promoting wellness awareness and practices among both the students and the faculty, the event was a huge success, according to feedback from the participants.

The core concept of Wellness Day was to encourage the Kent community to not only practice wellness temporarily, but also to make wellness a part of their lives. The day was filled with various activities, such as soccer, gardening workshops, gratitude cookies, reading, and mural painting. As a participant myself, I attended the soccer activity, which was a breeze from all the hard toils of academic work as I enjoyed playing soccer with my friends and also meeting new people that attended the activity out of interest. Said Dr. Kearney, the organizer of the event, “I wanted to build a Kent student’s ‘tool box,’ with the hope that Kent students either engaged in something new or tried something they had never done before.”

The students seemed to enjoy the mural painting the most as they felt it was a great way to connect the entire community and pull people together, putting down their phones and working together. Art is a beautiful way to express mental wellness, and also a good way to connect people as well. Students and faculty shared even more time knowing together: Mr. Winkler sat down with multiple SC members for inspiration on the murals, and Mr. Booth, as engaging as ever, joked around with the soccer kids. Aside from mural painting, legos were a big hit, as well as the gardening workshop, gratitude cookies, soccer, and reading. 

Mia Espinosa and Harrison Fogel, the Student Council members organizing the event, put in a significant amount of time and energy into the day, as well as the other SC members and stewards. “It was a true Kent community effort,” said Dr. Kearney after the event.

With an unanticipated popularity for the event, the Student Council hopes to continue organizing Wellness Days in the future, with the possibility of programming them once a trimester or twice a year. Another idea was to hold wellness fairs, where students could create booths on different wellness awareness and practices. Some also proposed that we should add more spots to popular events, such as soccer, which filled up instantly due to its popularity. Regardless, it was undoubtedly an amazing experience for a lot of people, and they look forward more to come.