784: EdUp Student Health & Wellness Mini Series - with Host Gwyneth Giangrande⁠ & Guest ⁠Mary Kay Connerton⁠, ⁠Maryland Teacher of the Year⁠

Gwyneth June Giangrande: Welcome back, everybody. It's your time to EdUp on the EdUp Experience podcast, where we make education your business. This is your special guest host, Gwyneth June Giangrande. This episode is part of a mini-series of the EdUp Experience, where I talk to education leaders about student wellness. Today, I am pleased to welcome my special guest, Mary Kay Connerton. Ms. Connerton is the health and wellness teacher for Annapolis High School and was recently named Maryland Teacher of the Year.

She's a member of the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County, and her commitment to student wellness is a passion she is sharing throughout her county and in conversations with elected leaders and decision-makers. She created a wellness program to assist the school community with living healthfully, earning the Wellness School of Distinction Award. She co-leads the trauma team, programs that focus on healing and connecting communities, and pioneered the first yoga program in social-emotional learning or wellness curriculum for 25,000 students. Ms. Connerton received the 2020 SHAPE Society of Health and Physical Educators Friend Award and earned a master's in special education and a bachelor's in childhood education from SUNY Cortland. So welcome, Ms. Connerton, and congratulations. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Mary Kay Connerton: Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction.

Gwyneth: Why don't you start off introducing how you started in the field of teaching and your involvement with health and wellness?

Mary Kay: From the moment I can remember, I really always wanted to be a teacher and a mom, and now I am serving as both, which is wonderful. As I went through my journey, at first I thought I wanted to be a dance teacher or an art teacher, and I kind of fell into the world of special education. From that lens, I began realizing how much my students needed the ability to self-regulate and to really take their whole self into account. With this simultaneous knowledge and learning of becoming a yoga teacher, I started weaving the two worlds together.

Gwyneth: That's great. Especially, I mean, my website focuses on the arts and you said you're a dance teacher. I'm a dancer. I dance outside of school and I've danced for many years. So what challenges did you face while implementing some of these programs and what successes have you observed at Annapolis High School?

Mary Kay: Well, I think for me, the biggest struggle has been getting the buy-in from people at first, especially fellow colleagues. And I totally understand it, but we want to have our children learning what we're teaching them, right? So it's always driven by the standards and the curriculum. A lot of times I know that people get fearful of taking time out of the lesson to put towards anything else but the content. What I've seen from just my data collection and my experience, and trying to do this in a grassroots motion over the course of the past 14 years, is that it gives quality instruction when we take time to pause and check in with our mental well-being, with our whole self, when we give ourselves that opportunity to rest. It really gives us the quality of our quantity.

For example, one of my favorite statistics that I have from my data collection is in 2020-2021, my colleague and I did a case study. I was paired with his AP physics class and I taught meditation to them. His class that did not receive meditation just went about with the general teaching that he was offering. The class with meditation scored 10% higher than the other class, 20% higher than the county average, and three times higher than the global average, with the highest scoring of minority females. So it really demonstrates the power behind the practice.

Gwyneth: That's a really interesting statistic because I know for myself I tend to get very stressed out, and what I've been doing in the past couple of years more recently is trying to meditate and it actually has helped a lot. We even have something at my school called the Spacio, and it's just a moment where you take some time for meditation. They ring a gong over the loudspeaker, and then you just take like two minutes every morning to just take a breath and remind yourself what you're grateful for. It's really helpful because I think high school can be so stressful with tests and exams and that pressure to do well. So I think meditation is really important.

Mary Kay: Absolutely, Gwyneth. When I first heard about your mission and saw your website and this wonderful podcast, I was feeling so connected to you. In high school for me, similarly, I carried a lot of anxiety and stress, and I wish I had learned yoga and meditation in those years. I came to learn it in college and my early adult years, and I just find it so valuable. For me, it's just so personal because high school is really hard and there are lots of shifts and changes and a lot of growing. It's really necessary to make sure that everyone is healthy in their whole self.

Gwyneth: I completely agree. I think high schoolers tend to decompress with technology by going on our phones, going on TikTok, any kind of social media. What I've been trying to do recently, after I'm finished with my homework, is not touch my phone. I just get ready for bed and then I just go to sleep. I kind of just let myself fall into that sleep because there have been so many studies about blue light stimulating your brain and affecting your sleep. I think it's really important for high schoolers to realize that some of the ways that we use to cope with stress or manage stress are actually making it worse sometimes.

Mary Kay: Absolutely. I loved on your site how you were giving shout-outs to certain books that you were reading. I love reading. I think that the realm of wellness is really what it boils down to – what makes you feel good, right? So reading can be a form of wellness and of taking that time, that space.

I think too, what a lot of people overlook for high schoolers, having had the experience of teaching at the elementary, middle, high, and college level, is that the supports are really intricately needed because oftentimes the look is, well, you know, they're young adults, and yet the support still needs to be there. Something that I love about the programming that I've been able to instill is we have wellness groups. I'm paired up with a school therapist or a school counselor and we have groups for teen moms, grief, substance abuse, and anxiety. It's been really wonderful to kind of see how there's this mold of that therapeutic standpoint and the actual motion and movement of what wellness means from yoga to exploring other realms of it.

Gwyneth: And how accessible are these mental health services to all students? Even those who face barriers due to location, financial constraints, or stigma? How do mental health services address even diverse cultural and background needs of student populations?

Mary Kay: I think that's something where schools and education across the board need to do better. The wellness program that I'm running is only offered at Annapolis High School. I'm the only position as a wellness coordinator in the district, and we have a very, very large district. So I hope that this can expand countywide and beyond because ultimately, the need for the various stories that each child brings can't always just fall on a teacher. It needs to come from everywhere. I know the expression is so frequently used, "it takes a village," but it's so true. We need to be able to connect with different providers and community members and student services and therapists to kind of have this team so that we can really address the needs no matter what the gender, the background, the socioeconomic cases, so that it's accessible for all.

Gwyneth: I think even with technology, that has helped. I think there are two sides of it. Technology has really helped by students finding resources and people to connect to as a mental health resource. And there's the other side of it that we now have unique mental health challenges that high school students face because we are in such a digital age and we are very connected to our phones and we're connected online. But I do think one thing that's great about it is that a lot of people now do therapy sessions over Zoom, over the phone. So I think there are two very different sides of it, that it can be really helpful and at the same time it can almost be very detrimental to you.

Mary Kay: I couldn't agree more. I feel like it's almost a need for education surrounding that to bring awareness because I think that's ultimately what we need to do – bring awareness to ourselves, to what we're giving ourselves, whether it's the food, the drink, the screen, whatever it may be. We're constantly being stimulated in our society; it's so fast-paced and the culture that we have. And then the fact that you kind of referenced too, the different types of needs across backgrounds, right? Different cultures may look at wellness in a different light than other groups.

Gwyneth: Something interesting that my school started that I really love is that we now have peer support groups for certain diverse and cultural backgrounds. It's a safe space where anybody who identifies with that background or with that identity now has a safe space at school. They meet and they can talk about it. It is a very safe space for everyone to just kind of share their history, their background, how they're feeling. I think that's really important, and I really like that at my school. I just wish that it kind of became more popular throughout high schools in the US. I think over the past couple of years it has because I think it's really different when you're surrounded by people who are like you, who understand your background, who understand your heritage, who understand your day-to-day.

Mary Kay: That is wonderful. I find these groups that I've referenced that we're doing at the high school, and it kind of flows with what you just said, oftentimes my students will say, "I didn't realize that so-and-so had a similar situation" or "I don't feel so lonely" because you have that connection and that's so important.

Gwyneth: I think what's really comforting is knowing that somebody else is going through the same things you are. Even with college applications, like that stress, managing that stress – it feels better to know that almost every other senior in America, in the world, is going through the same thing. They're going through the same stress. I think just having that in mind, knowing that everyone else is going through the same thing, it's comforting to know that.

Mary Kay: It is. It totally is. Even peer support in promoting mental health among high school students has become more popular over the past couple of years, and I think it's really important.

Gwyneth: How do you believe a teacher's role extends into the realm of student mental health and wellness?

Mary Kay: I think it has a huge role. And I think there needs to be more support for teachers in that role. For me, becoming a teacher – you know the book Matilda? I always thought when I was little that I wanted to be like Miss Honey. I thought this picture of teaching was going to be a certain way. After all of my studies, from my undergrad to my graduate program to then my administration program, I never learned about how to cope with when a student is killed or a student takes their own life, or you have violence in your classroom, or children of poverty are homeless, or dealing with children who are struggling with their own sexual identity. There are all these different things that come with teaching that I don't think anyone can ever really be prepared for in that sense.

I think teachers have such an incredible privilege and honor and responsibility to be such a grounding force in a student's mental health. They can technically save a life. I don't mean that to be in a dramatic sense, but sometimes such a small act of kindness or that connection with the teacher can do more than what you think in that moment. I just think that teachers can really make that shift of supporting the whole student and wellness, and they need to be supported to do that.

Gwyneth: I completely agree. I think sometimes high schoolers or students, in general, see their teachers more than they see their own parents. Whether that's because their parents work or they're divorced or they just don't see their parents – you are at school typically from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. when classes end, then you have extracurricular activities if you participate in those. I think a teacher being able to see the way a student is behaving, see a decline in their participation in class, a decline in their academic performance – teachers can see that more so sometimes than parents. I'm not saying in a way that parents aren't paying attention to their kids. I just think teachers have a different advantage to seeing how their student will act in a different way and kind of if there's a change, if there's a dramatic change, if you think that they may need to reach out to somebody to access a mental health resource. I think a lot of the time teachers are worried that they're going to overstep their boundaries. I think it's okay. It would just feel comforting to know that somebody is noticing, that somebody wants me to find those resources.

Mary Kay: Absolutely. I think too, with mental health, safety is the number one thing. As teachers being mandated reporters, like you were just saying, they get to see so much because of just the time and the consistency. I did not expect the world of teaching to be what it is, but it has brought incredible gifts into my life.

Gwyneth: I know we have to wrap up soon, but do you have any final advice for students, for teachers, for people in higher education that you kind of want to leave off with?

Mary Kay: I would just say, our motto for the wellness program is "wellness is the thread that unites us." I think ultimately, wellness is just what makes you feel good, in a healthy way. So just really tapping into that for your own being and knowing that by doing that for you, that's going to be that thread that connects us all to one another and to be able to care for others and our environment and the world.

Gwyneth: Thank you so much for joining me today.

Mary Kay: You're so welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Gwyneth.

Gwyneth: Ladies and gentlemen, you've just EdUp. Please visit my website, thezenstudent.com. Have a great day.