June 24, 2020 by Taylor Walsh Collected COVID-19 school guidance resources • “Balancing Academics and Wellbeing:” a July webinar • Exciting new project with the Whole Health Institute. Collected COVID-19 school guidance resources We’re continuing to build our site Resources Section, adding important policy and operating guidance for schools’ and families’ response to COVID-19. These articles, research studies, and policy papers have been prepared by many of the leading and most experienced organizations working in schools and communities across the whole health spectrum: The COVID Resources section is here. “Balancing Academics and Wellbeing for School Return in 2020” This July 17 webinar will bring together WholeHealthED advisors, partners and colleagues to consider how the combined positive health outcomes experienced by students and faculty who participate in whole health programs might help school officials plan for the return to school by emphasizing access to activities that can help offset the trauma and stress that most families will still experience. On May 5, the American Academy of Pediatrics published unambiguous guidance on this issue: “COVID-19 Planning Considerations: Return to In-person Education in Schools” . Notable excerpts: Under EDUCATION: • “If the academic expectations are unrealistic, school will likely become a source of further distress for students (and educators) at a time when they need additional support. • It is also critical to maintain a balanced curriculum with continued physical education and other learning experiences rather than an exclusive emphasis on core subject areas.” Under MENTAL HEALTH: • “Schools need to incorporate (into planning considerations) academic accommodations and supports for students who may still be having difficulty concentrating or learning new information due to stress associated with the pandemic.” The discussion will consider how those “other learning experiences” could be made available to schools during re-openings, however and whenever they take place. We’ll report the outcomes of this collaborative assessment and recommendations in the weeks following during a follow-on webinar designed for school leaders and educators Important new project with Whole Health Institute As WholeHealthED advanced the idea of whole health learning in K-12, other notable enterprises that embrace whole health thinking and precepts have been forming around the country. One of the most important was established in January when the Whole Health Institute and Chopra Research Library was formed by philanthropist Alice Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas. The mission of the Institute is to help people live a full and meaningful life by making the Whole Health approach affordable and accessible to everyone. The Institute will focus its work on transforming health and well-being by working from the very successful whole health model created and established in recent years within the VA, the nation’s largest healthcare system. (The creator and director of The VA initiative, Tracy Gaudet MD, now heads up WHI.) As COVID-19 blocked all in-person activities in the first quarter, the Institute’s whole health orientation and our approach in schools led to initial conversations based on our shared professional and collegial roots in integrative healthcare. These ultimately led to the creation of a project that is being built around our common interests in bringing whole person wellbeing to kids. As Dr. Gaudet explained in a May interview: We didn’t have this area of K-12 education highlighted originally. But with all of the trauma of uncertainty and fear around COVID I dread that we are creating a whole new generation of kids with ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences). We shifted because of COVID and because we have the right partner.” We’ll report more on this work in the weeks ahead. (For more on the antecedents of the Institute’s mission and purpose and the development of the whole health framework in the VA, see this report on the formal introduction of WHI last January.)