Wellness Wednesdays at New Rochelle High School
Teaching insights from neuroscience to engage minds and facilitate transformative learning and prosocial agency in at-risk adolescents.
The Challenge
Our modern world presents enormous challenges for adolescents in their quest to grow into healthy and functional adults who are engaged constructively and meaningfully with their families and communities. Recent CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveys document an escalating crisis in adolescent mental health. The challenges have been amplified by stresses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and toxic influences of social media. Many adolescents additionally suffer from adverse childhood experiences that threaten not only immediate well- being, but also their life-long physical, emotional, cognitive, and social health and functioning.
The Opportunity
Developmental neuroscience research has found that there is enhanced brain plasticity during adolescence. This plasticity, associated with the major hormonal changes during this developmental phase, makes adolescence a particularly crucial time for brain development, providing the possibility of recovery from the impacts of earlier adverse experiences. The Good Wolf Project's methodology builds on educational neuroscience research showing that teaching neuroscience can positively impact youth, providing hope and helping change attitudes from a defensive to a growth mindset. The Good Wolf Project also incorporates evidence-based aspects of other educational approaches to construct The Good Wolf Project's dynamic, adaptable, and engaging methodology.
Good Wolf’s Answer: Wellness Wednesdays
The City School District of New Rochelle (CSDNR) engaged The Good Wolf Project to teach weekly classes at New Rochelle High School throughout the second semester of the 2023-2024 academic year. This engagement was supported by a grant to The Good Wolf Project through the My Brother's Keeper and My Sister's Keeper (MBK/MSK) programs of CSDNR.
From January to June 2024, The Good Wolf Project taught 17 weekly classes as part of the High School's Leadership Course. Each Wednesday The Good Wolf Project shared research-validated concepts from cognitive and behavioral neuroscience paired with guided social-emotional learning. The class included 17 sophomore, junior, and senior students aged 15 to 17. Students learned how their brains work, then developed skills to support self-awareness, self-regulation, and active listening. Students were encouraged to focus on clarifying their own values and goals as they grew themselves into more effective learners, friends, family members, and citizens.
- Engagement, self-examination, self-regulation, and value-based thinking.
- Changing attitudes of negativity to mindsets of growth, hope, and motivation.
- Skills and habits of active listening, critical thinking, and life-long learning.
- Self-efficacy and prosocial agency in support of effective and thriving lives.
Outcomes were assessed using classroom observer ratings, pre-program and post-program surveys, and interviews with students and program director pre-program, immediately post- program, and 9 months after program end. Additionally, the program director provided estimates of personal maturation during the program from 0% to 100% (transformative).
Findings included:
- Completion rate was 89% (16 of 18 students)
- Those who completed the program were rated as demonstrating increases in personal maturation during the program ranging from 50% to 100%, with an average of 72%.
- 9 of 16 students completing the program were scored at 75% to 100%, indicating marked to transformative personal maturation during the 17-week program.
- Major areas of personal maturation included self-regulation, self-confidence, positive attitudes, successful focus on academic work and athletics, and improved relationships.
- All 11 non-graduating participants (100%) showed continuing maturation at 9 months.
- 4 of 5 graduating seniors were successfully enrolled in college nine months post-program.
- 1 of the 2 students who dropped out was charged with a violent felony two months later.
Summary of Outcomes: The 17-week Wellness Wednesdays program effectively engaged students, facilitated the adoption of growth mindsets, enhanced self-awareness and self- regulation, improved interpersonal social interactions, and accelerated personal maturation.
A Growing Opportunity
Based on the positive outcomes from the Wellness Wednesdays pilot program in the spring semester of 2024 and the Wellness Wednesdays Alumni Program in the spring semester of 2025, The Good Wolf Project was asked to begin the process of integrating the The Good Wolf Project curriculum into New Rochelle High School more broadly, so that more and more students will be able to experience its benefits.
Therefore, in the fall of 2025, The Good Wolf Project will begin once-weekly classes for two classes of 9th-grade social studies students for 25 weeks across 2 semesters, with continued follow-up during the subsequent three years until graduation. The results of this next phase will help in planning for the further expansion of Good Wolf’s work at the High School in the coming years.
With the support of Dr. Dagoberto Artiles, Principal, Dr. Gail Joyner, Assistant Superintendent, and Dr. Corey Reynolds, Superintendent of the City School District of New Rochelle, The Good Wolf Project was awarded grant funding for the 2025-2026 academic year to help initiate this next phase of the Good Wolf Approach at New Rochelle High School.
The Good Wolf Project is grateful for the partnership with the CSDNR, as well as the additional generous support from donors to The Good Wolf Project that helps make the continuation and expansion of this work possible.