How Pace Academy Supports Student Well-Being and Advances Its Strategic Priorities Through #WinAtSocial
Studies show that students with stronger well-being perform better academically, benefiting from enhanced concentration, motivation, and higher self-esteem. However, 70% of students report that mental health issues like anxiety and depression are major issues among their peers.
With well-being impacting students’ ability to learn and thrive academically, how can schools support student well-being and address the unique needs of each student?
Recognizing the impact that wellness has on learning, Pace Academy, a K-12 independent School in Atlanta, GA, has identified Mental Health and Well-Being as strategic priorities. To help with these initiatives, the school partnered with The Social Institute.
The Social Institute huddled with Pace Academy Middle School teacher Julie Hampton and Middle School Counselor Lele Fallon to explore how they implemented #WinAtSocial and the impact it’s having on their school community:
Integrating Wellness Programs into the School Day
To effectively implement a wellness program across grades 4-8, Pace Academy looked at the classes where #WinAtSocial would best support their well-being initiative and reach the most students. In the Middle School, they landed on Tech Studio, a Discovery class. Hampton, one of the lead facilitators of #WinAtSocial Lessons, found that running the lessons once a week in Discovery fit best with the school schedule, gave students the most lesson time, and was an effective strategy for teaching social media and wellness education. After trying a few lesson schedules, Hampton found that running #WinAtSocial was easiest once a week:
“I went with the hashtag #WinAtSocial, and decided, I’m going to call Wednesdays #WinAtWednesdays..”
By using a weekly schedule for running #WinAtSocial Lessons, educators regularly huddle with students and equip them with responsible decision-making skills.
Engaging Students with Trending #WinAtSocial Lessons
After finding an effective place within the school schedule for character development education, Fallon and Hampton engaged students in conversations about well-being. They also recognized that as they supported student well-being, it became easier to fuel students’ academic success.
It’s not uncommon for schools to face eye-rolling when implementing lessons about social media and tech — especially because many times the content is outdated or feels like it talks down to the students. However, Fallon and Hampton found that getting students interested in and engaged around this education was easy with #WinAtSocial’s Trending Lessons. These Trending Lessons address timely topics that impact students online and offline, like A.I. deepfakes, group chat drama, ChatGPT, and so much more. “As a whole, I feel like they’re more engaged when I choose a Trending Lesson,” Hampton stated. She found that the 5-8 grade Trending Lesson, Understanding the good and bad sides of ‘Anxiety’, inside and out, resonated well with her students and started a healthy conversation about social media, technology, and well-being.
“One of my primary goals as a technology teacher is to empower students to become effective producers of media, not just passive consumers,” Hampton said. “The Social Institute program supports this mission by providing lessons that encourage critical thinking and engagement with real-world issues, such as exploring the power and complexity of humanitarian aid, navigating the challenges of AI-generated content during elections, and managing dynamics within group chats.”
Empowering Students to Coach Others on Positive Social Media Use
At Pace Academy, students in grades 4-8 run #WinAtSocial Lessons and huddle on popular student topics involving social media and technology. Whether or not students have their own devices, the #WinAtSocial Lessons apply to them in very meaningful ways. Hampton shared why this education is necessary, even for students without their own devices:
“Some of them are still coming in with the mindset that they don’t really need [social media education] either A – because they don’t have social media or B – they’re not experiencing the issues that are brought up in some of the lessons. I said, ‘You’re going to be around other children your age that may be experiencing this and you need to be able to relate to them, empathize with them, and maybe even help them with some tips that you’ve learned from this.’”
By running #WinAtSocial Lessons with their younger students, Pace Academy is proactively equipping students with the skills to think critically, empathize with others, and make responsible decisions, online and offline. By doing this, Pace Academy has instilled the importance of coaching others. Over time, Fallon and Hampton have also found that students were coaching educators as much as educators were coaching them. “I love how The Social Institute’s program lets the students teach me as much about social media as I’m teaching them about social media,” Hampton shared.
In addition, Hampton discussed how Pace Academy prides itself on building strong relationships between teachers and students. Since the school has been successful in fostering strong student-teacher relationships early, huddling through #WinAtSocial has become easy, and modern life skills education has proved impactful for their students.
Supporting Your School
Pace Academy’s partnership with The Social Institute and their implementation of #WinAtSocial reveals how easy it is to support students’ well-being with timely, ready-to-run lessons. With social media and tech’s strong impact on student well-being, educators are increasingly tasked with staying up-to-date and helping students navigate social media and technology positively while balancing their normal planning. Interested in turnkey #WinAtSocial Lessons that require no lesson planning in your school? Request a demo for some of our most popular lessons:
- Trending Lesson for grades 9-12:
- Trending Lesson for grades 5-8:
- Trending Lesson for grades 3-4:
The Social Institute (TSI) is the leader in empowering students by understanding students. Through #WinAtSocial, our gamified, peer-to-peer learning platform, we equip students, educators, and families to navigate their social world – in the classroom and beyond, online and offline – in healthy, high-character ways. Our unique, student-respected approach empowers and equips, rather than scares and restricts. We incorporate timely topics about social media, tech use, and current events that are impacting student well-being and learning. #WinAtSocial Lessons teach life skills for the modern day, capture student voice, and provide school leaders with actionable insights. Through these insights, students play an essential role in school efforts to support their own health, happiness, and future success as we enable high-impact teaching, meaningful family conversations, and a healthy school culture.