Bobcat Stories

By Dr. Scott Crago, Academic Dean

After much consideration, we are renaming the WILLDS program the WELLBEING program. This change comes for several reasons, including changes to the curriculum for the 2024-25 school year. The name WELLBEING more succinctly encapsulates Bosque School’s commitment to whole-child education and our recognition that to support our students properly, we must see and nurture them as whole people, not just scholars. Thus, the WELLBEING department delivers a holistic educational curriculum in wellness, education, leadership, life skills, belonging, engagement, inquiry, neuroscience, and growth.

Through our WELLBEING curriculum, students gain skills and awareness in health and wellness, exploring increasing rates of adolescent mental health concerns, developing coping strategies to manage stress, exploring values-based decision-making regarding drugs, alcohol, and healthy relationships, and considering the consequences of technology and social media usage. Countless studies demonstrate that along with academic excellence, personal and professional success requires developing and mastering these skills, a fact Bosque is dedicated to as manifested through the WELLBEING department.

Along with a name change, we are also updating the curriculum. The curriculum and course offerings in the upper school will run more like a traditional academic department. In ninth grade, all students will be required to take a Foundations course. Rather than meet once during an eight-day rotation, this course will meet like all regular classes. By doing so, students will have more touch points with the WELLBEING curriculum and ultimately have a more meaningful experience in their personal and academic growth. After Foundations and their ninth-grade year, students will choose from a variety of electives that include Service Learning, Expeditionary Leadership, and Feminism and Gender, which allows students to design a course of study that suits their individual interests in the broad array of topics covered under the WELLBEING umbrella. After ninth grade, students do have a few required courses, including a one-semester course on wellness and the two-part college seminar/life skills sequence completed in eleventh and twelfth grade.

We look forward to implementing these changes to the WELLBEING program. Please reach out to me with any questions at scott.crago@bosqueschool.org.