Primary Submission Category: Interventions/Programs
A Student Movement for Student Movement: Reinventing Recess
Authors: Quinn Valier Kimeera Paladugu
Presenting Author: Abigail Jeyaraj*
The WHO defines burnout as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”. A decade of studies on K-12 and college students show that these groups are at-risk for occupational burnout. The turmoil of the COVID pandemic has exacerbated these trends and we are now facing an emergent mental health crisis across our college campuses. Students are frequently the subjects of wellness research and intervention, less frequently are they architects identifying needs and designing solutions. Using principles of community engagement, particularly with communities of color – “Nothing for us without us” – our students are designing and developing upstream prevention programs to benefit themselves and their peers on campus. The first of these programs builds from the life, work, and legacy of Dr Toni Yancey inventor of Instant Recess and is called Student Movement for Student Movement: Reinventing Recess. In our local version, undergraduate students “reimagine recess” in several ways aiming 1) to recreate a comparable experience of the freedom that they themselves experienced as children when they were granted semi structured time with few to no expectations. While it’s easy to see how classroom issues are left at the door as the “children” (young and old) race outside to reset it is much less obvious how to sustain the benefits of short reprieve in the medium to longer term. As such, the project is 2) also part systems analysis examining the obstacles and onramps for sustainable and enduring change. Finally, as budding population health scientists, undergraduate project designers also consider risks of burnout and social exclusion as unevenly or inequitably spread across campus populations, something that affects both outreach and outcomes. In addition to qualitative reflection preliminary quantitative data presented will focus on this latter part (3) of the project.