‘Wellness rooms’ give Vallejo students space for mental health breaks

VALLEJO – For Vallejo students coping with social-emotional and mental health challenges, schools are increasingly offering a reprieve: special “wellness rooms” with beanbags, relaxing music, books, games, calming aroma diffusers, and a trained caring adult. 

Students are regularly using the rooms to take 15 to 20 minute breaks, according to school district data, though occasionally the visits last longer.

“It’s a place to provide a short reset so that they can be able to go back to class and be in a space to learn and not worry about whatever else is going on,” Vallejo City Unified School District mental health coordinator Jeanna Kelly said. “It’s good for them to have a space to deal with their emotions instead of holding them in. And our kids are telling us it’s working.”

The program started during the 2018-19 school year, when the Solano County Office of Education offered schools the opportunity to apply for grants to set up wellness rooms. By 2020, 16 of Vallejo’s 20 public schools had wellness rooms. Shortly after the district returned to in-person learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, it funded wellness rooms in the remaining four schools. 

Vallejo isn’t the only school district using wellness rooms. Solano County’s education office is also funding such spaces at about 30 other non-VCUSD schools, and school districts across California and the nation have been increasingly using them since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vallejo’s approximately 9,900 public school students have used wellness rooms 7,145 times during class this school year through Feb. 26, according to VCUSD’s data, averaging about 60 times per day. Use of wellness rooms is up from last year, when about 24 students used it each day. Students reported that using the space was helpful 96% of the time.

Mental health support provider Deborah Kim, who runs the wellness room at Dan Mini Elementary School, said that students come into the room to talk with her about conflicts they have with their friends or adults, stress over school work and class participation, and grief due to the loss of a loved one. 

For students who prefer to speak in Spanish, a Spanish-speaking intern is available on Thursdays and Fridays. Often, students will play board games or color as they talk. Sometimes students just need space to rest briefly or do a breathing exercise. Kim said she thinks giving students a place to calm down and regroup helps them learn.

“When you have a lot of thoughts and stressors, just talking to someone does help,” Kim said. “Giving them that break, I truly believe it helps with academics.”

Charlotte Sanchez, who teaches fifth grade at Dan Mini and was recently named the district’s teacher of the year, said that her students make heart signs in class if they want to use the wellness room. She said sometimes students need reminding about the space, so she’ll occasionally ask students if they want to use the room if they appear to be struggling, but they’re never required to go. Sanchez said she notices a big change in their demeanor when they come back to class after using the wellness room.

“I see an immediate tension release,” Sanchez said.

Using the wellness room isn’t just about short term solutions though. Kim said students also learn and practice skills to better cope with their emotions in the long term, like calming breath work, communicating strategies to better navigate conflict, and body tapping — a method of tapping different areas of one’s body to help relieve anxiety. 

District elementary school teachers also now teach students socio-emotional skills through Second Step, a curriculum where students learn these skills and practice them as a group. Sanchez said that, instead of choosing to go to the wellness room, sometimes her students take a two-minute break while still in the classroom and practice one of the skills they’ve learned to regulate their emotions.

Sanchez said that she thinks the wellness room and other methods of helping students with mental health and social emotional learning skills has become more important since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I really think we need this after COVID,” Sanchez said. “There was a lack of emotional and social development during distance learning and we’ve had to reteach those skills.”

Students don’t just use the wellness rooms when they need a break. Wellness rooms across the district also offer social emotional learning opportunities during students’ free time — lunch and recess. Kim said during recess, Dan Mini’s wellness rooms offer coloring and art activities, reading, sensory activities, yoga, sound work, and board games, depending on the day, and that 20-30 students usually come. About 346 students per day use wellness rooms during lunch or recess across all schools, according to the district. 

Kelly, the district’s mental health coordinator, said that while wellness rooms are the most common intervention that students who are having mental health struggles use, the district also offers other options. Care teams at schools organize groups of eight to 10 students who are facing challenges with the same topic to work on together with an adult to improve. At Dan Mini, Kim said a group of boys are working together on building relationships and self control.

Kelly said that some students also receive therapy through the district. Sometimes the therapy occurs onsite and other times the district helps students receive therapy though an outside group, such as the Seneca Family of Agencies.

Overall, Kim said that the mental health interventions at Dan Mini have been working, and she’s happy with how the wellness room is functioning. One student she works with has been having trouble communicating with other students and adults, but they’ve slowly been opening up after visiting Kim often in the room.

“I love my job,” Kim said. “I see growth in the students I work with, and it makes my heart happy.”