BELFAST, Maine — The former language lab located next to Room 109 at Belfast Area High School is getting a holistic makeover as volunteers work to turn it into a Wellness Room that will serve the entire school community.
Once up and running in the last week of April, the room — and its low lights and soft music — will be home to a revolving group of area alternative health care practitioners. They’ll offer short, free sessions of massage therapy, Reiki, craniosacral therapy, acupuncture and chiropractic care to those who need it.
And, according to chiropractor Dr. Jane Robertson of Belfast, a large swath of the school population most likely need those stress reduction services.
“Being in high school is stressful,” she said Wednesday. “Being a teacher is stressful … We’re hoping to teach them, possibly, a different way to alleviate stress.”
She said she was inspired to create a Wellness Room in Belfast after hearing that the former Camden-Rockport High School had a successful, similar program that came into being after a cluster of teen suicides and tragedies in the early 2000s. The program continues today at Camden Hills Regional High School.
“That’s the vision I want to have at Belfast,” Robertson said.
She has been working with Kristen Burkholder, a licensed massage therapist and Reiki master, to make that vision a reality.
Burkholder was a volunteer who offered her services in 2001 to help the grieving population at Camden-Rockport High School.
“I just remember the experience of being in the high school and working with the kids,” she said. “It was life changing in some ways for me. I have really strong memories of being a teenager myself. Everybody struggles in high school.”
Burkholder said she imagines the Wellness Room as a space for both students and teachers to relax.
“To really get back to center, feel refreshed and get some distance between them and their stressful day,” she said.
But the process has been slow.
The women had to get the idea approved, to find a room at the high school to use and to talk to students, teachers and staff members about their plan. Students under 18 will have to take permission slips home to be signed by parents before they can be seen by the wellness practitioners during their lunch period or study halls.
Then they had to find volunteers who will offer their services for two-hour shifts for one to three days each month. All volunteers underwent security screening.
Additionally, Robertson said, participants will all be fully clothed during each session.
“My hope is that students who may not ever have a chance to experience this type of work [have that opportunity],” she said. “Rather than turn to violence or drugs, maybe they can turn to better choices to deal with stress.”
Robertson said she also hopes that students will have an opportunity to learn more about careers in this type of health care. She graduated from Belfast Area High School, and doesn’t know any other students who went on to be a chiropractor.
“We’re hoping to maybe spark an interest in alternative medicine as a profession for them,” she said.
Organizers are searching for more professional alternative health care practitioners who are interested in volunteering at the Wellness Room. For information, contact Dr. Jane Robertson at 338-2024 or Kristen Burkholder at 322-7816.
What I find interesting is that we have become a society of rules & regulations especially at schools under the assumption that we are creating stress free, safer schools and because of this students and teachers need a “wellness room” because they are stressed-out……………………………… I must be missing something!
While I applaud the idea of this type of therapy, I think it’s better served for the retired community as opposed to teens going to school and only expected to pass and go to the next level. Yeah, it’s stressful, but so is working every day. Chinese students manage to find an equal balance, because they run on a schedule. Why do you think they’re coming here for education? Easier. They don’t have to go to school from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Crunchies are crunchies….wish I had that mentality. Need to sign up for a yoga class I guess.
BaaaaaaaaaaaaHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa are you kidding me,for real.
and we wonder why kids are soft and think they are owed something in life
I think it has more to do with the parents than stuff like this.
i agree but this doesnt help.
Teaching students healthy coping skills so that they don’t turn to drugs, alcohol and cigarettes does not create a sense of entitlement. It creates good emotional and mental health.
Its not the stresses of high school that push kids to drugs. Thats crap. Its portrayed as a good time on television (and sometimes in the home) as a fun way to socialize with your peers. The world doesnt give a crap about anyones feelings and that is the truth. To coddle these kids at an early age is to put them behind the 8-ball very early. Its not realistic.
Many troubled teenagers turn to these things as a way of coping. Some even try to kill themselves because of the pressure and stress of school and their school peers.
Teaching teens healthy, productive ways to deal with their stress (rather than avoid it or try to drown it with substances) is NOT coddling them. It is teaching them some skills that many adults lack. Maybe this world, country and state would be a better place if people used healthy ways of coping and dealing with things.
….so obviously they needed to hire a massage therapist to teach them how to cope, are you serious?
It says in the article that all of the practitioners are volunteering their services. No one is paying anything for this. It is all free.
Helping human beings to learn how to relax their muscles and get rid of muscular tension is a precious gift.
50 percent of these students parents are divorced. A good number of these kids have folks who have been laid off or abuse drugs or alcohol. Some of them get slapped around by a family member-or sexually abused at some point. Many sleep in poorly heated homes with meals that most of us would not want to eat. Yeah, this may be a waste of time, but it might also help these kids with the stress that some of us think they don’t have. Being a teenager is much more difficult today-did any of us get roasted on Facebook before social media?
I’d bet that inner city schools in New York City or Chicago would like to have this as a topic of conversation over their daily problems. This will go away on it’s own if it has no value. Give it a chance-
“Wellness Room . . . . Holistic makeover . . . . Reiki, craniosacral therapy . . . . Being in high school is stressful . . . . Being a teacher is stressful . . . . grieving population at . . . . High School . . . . Everybody struggles in high school . . . . participants will all be fully clothed . . . . alternative medicine as a profession for them . . . .”
Give . . . . me . . . . a . . . . break.
for a second I thought this article was an April fools joke… I mean it is April….
Ever teach before?
Why do you ask?
Gross National Wellness:
Gross National Wellness is Now, You See,
More Important than GDP,
A New Diktat from Ban Ki-moon,
Now All Sing this New Looney-Tune:
“With Globalism, You Must Learn to Be Selfless,
Be Austere, Poor, ‘cos it’s All About Wellness,
Your Earnings, Taxed, Must Flow Offshore
To Deserving Folks Who Need it More,
En Route it Passes Through Various Banks
Which Take Their Cuts and Give Us Thanks,
“A Wondrous Thing for Your Foreign Brothers”,
Buying Birth Control for Foreign Mothers,
Every Prime Minister is in On the Scam,
Well Aware Long Before Each Ran,
Through NAFTA, GATT, the WTO,
Watch Employment Pack Up, Watch Jobs Go,
It was All Planned Before You were Born,
But Hey, How’s Your Wellness, Don’t Be Forlorn”
Poem Copyright Alan Watt April 11, 2012
I believe that this article’s headline is very misleading. According to all news accounts, the Wellness Room was put into place for the benefit of BAHS students to utilize during study halls and at lunch time. Additionally in those news stories, it is Jane Robertson and Kristen Burkholder who have suggested that the room could be utilized by anyone working at BAHS. However, I’ve read no news account from any school official anywhere stating that BAHS employees will be using the room as well.
Oh, well, in that case, no problems here at all.
Exactly. It’s another way that two community members are reaching out to help the youth of Belfast. When did volunteering to help out kids become such a jaded act?
Help the Youth of Belfast?? By doing what? Have you interviewed an youngster for a job in the last decade or so? Have you seen what we are creating? Is it possible to shield these kids from the realities of life any more thoroughly than what is being done now?
Like it or not, life is tough, and there are folks outside of our fine Country who are teaching their children about this reality. They are exposing these youngster to these realities are are given them the tools they need to succeed. How will our students compare?
Yes, I have interviewed many youngsters for jobs and one of the many things I do before I interview them is look at their cover letters and resumes to check for spelling, punctuation, and grammatical mistakes.
I am assuming that spelling is not taught in school anymore??–The way a lot of people spell things these days, and especially the younger ones, just makes you “cringe” all over!
I’ve interviewed, supervised and worked with the young people of this generation. They are am amazing bunch.
I taught and exposed my children to all of these things mentioned and they have grown into adults who have been overachievers because they have a strong base with healthy ways of coping and dealing with the world.
In my adult life, I have never been in a workplace where my boss treats me anything like some of my teachers did, and what work place allows fellow employees to verbally or physically abuse someone? If happens everyday in our schools.
You telling me the news article is misleading? Seems like you’ve done some research on this and that’s good.
Sounds like a new hang out for the teachers.
This is exactly why I wrote my post. It is not a new hang out for the teachers. It is for the students, just like everything else at BAHS.
Yep – a place they can go to avoid classes – wonderful idea…..
They’re not avoiding class if they’re going during lunch or study hall. I’m sure there will be a check somewhere to see what classes the students should be in if they think of skipping.
See my above post – students are quick to manipulate an opprotunity, again – you probably have not spent time in a High School.
Did you read the article? It will ONLY be available to kids during study halls and lunch for only 1-3 days a month and only for a 2 hour shift each of the 1-3 days. At the max, they will only be having 24 fifteen minute appointments a month.
And you obviously have never spent time in a high school and don’t know students.
With this attitude, I sure hope that you don’t spend time or teach in a high school.
The article says lunch and study hall. I honestly don’t know many students who actually study in study hall.
Love it Jane…High School is stressful and your on the right track by teaching methods for stress reduction that will hopefully be taken with them after high school and utilized to manuver through all the tough times that will confront them for years to come. As a parent of a student at BAHS — I thank you for this effort!
And your tax dollars pay for it.
What part of “volunteer” do people not understand here?
The facilities and a staff person to man it cost money.
In most high schools there are rooms that are not utilized. Since the volunteers all had to pass background checks, I don’t see where a staff member would need to be present.
I can’t see where there would be any cost, but even so, it would be worth it to help troubled teens find healthy ways to deal with the stress in their lives. We may even save a few of them from going down the wrong path or even worse, from attempting suicide.
And maybe if some of the school shooters had a place like this to go to, they may not have resorted to gunning down their classmates and teachers.
If this wellness room, and the huge expense of running it- is a big concern for you-You must go nuts when you see the waste in our Federal Government. How many of us took regular classes throughout our education that had little or no value? That’s why most of us remember a small list of favorite teachers. Maybe this room will provide that person to some kids that have some really huge problems that many of us never had to face.
I really think anything I post on this silliness will get me banned.
No, not as long as you keep your clothes on: “participants will all be fully clothed.”
Yeah, that’s the part that is throwing me.
I suspect that most of those who condemn this modest opportunity for stressed-out students and teachers to get short rests would never opposite luxurious gyms and workout rooms for highly paid corporate executives or for professional athletes. It’s only the poorly paid teachers, with ever more demands placed upon them by politicians who couldn’t survive a day in a classroom, who get such silly condemnations. Do we really want a relentless pace of study, study, study as in some Asian countries? Give these young and older folks a break.
Relentless? Yeah, we’re providing the world with quality students… What is the dropout rate? Should the students get medical marijuana while they’re in this “wellness room” too? Is this where this is all going?
Oh, just give it a week or two!
I thought teachers had to work 14 hours a day 8 days a week just to squeeze everything the can’t get done into their 6 1/2 hour work day. When will they ever have time to use the wellness room?
I am Republican, therefore I should be against this wellness room idea because it might benefit people.
I’m a Republican, and I’m all for it. At least I would have been when I was a seventeen-year old male who was hot for teacher!
Yes, them bad old right wingahs, they bully, they take away from people…LOL….
And they are against women too, thats the latest craze…….
Bible thumpers too…
Does anyone have a job that comes with a “wellness room”? Sounds like fun. Wish my high school had one. Really though…isn’t study hall and lunch….for study and lunch? Are we preparing kids for the real world? When Uncle Sam comes calling….will there be a Wellness Room near my tank? Or my post in this fox hole? What about when I work in a power station? Or in the mill? Where’s my Wellness Room?!?!?!
Some of America’s most successful companies have percs that would make a wellness room look like jail. Check out what Microsoft, Google and hundreds of other great companies offer their employees. Being nice to students, teachers, and other employees does not mean soft. You mention the mills, have those workers negotiated benefits that other workers have not enjoyed over the years?
Military service is voluntary last I knew. Most who enlist know what they are up against.
Many businesses have break rooms where employees can go unwind, many have gyms or wellness rooms to promote wellness among their employees.
All kidding aside….kuddo’s to the students with motivation to make something happen that they believe in. Really, organizational skills are worth their weight in gold. Regardless of the worth of the wellness room…getting skilled and educated volunteers screened and scheduled is a daunting task.
I had a bad text message last period and need to relax.. oh me! oh my! what shall I wear, I need the stress room… I got an F on my test today because I didn’t get my strees room time yesterday so now I need stress room time… and on and on and on…. What a bunch of crap, Grow up and face the real world like a real Man or Women…. what is this preparing them for… More waste of taxpayers money
Exactly. Pretty ridiculous, heh?
Did you not read the part about volunteers and it being free???
Real men and women learn and utilize healthy coping skills so that they do not have to turn to food, drugs, alcohol and cigarettes as a way of coping.
Why would you be against anything that helps students to learn valuable skills that will help them once they get into the adult world? As crazy as people are in the world and state right now, it is a good thing to teach our students some of these coping skills.
Great, leave a space in that room for a Cross and allow prayer and we’ve got a deal.
Many of these things are a form of prayer and/or meditation. I am sure if a Christian student wants to pray/meditate in the room they will not be denied as long as they are not trying to convert someone or push their religion down someone’s throat as so many do.
People can’t say the word “Christmas Tree” anymore without it being an insult to someone, and you think kids can just openly start meditating in a classroom… Bright.
The whole concept of Christmas and Christmas trees would be offensive to Christ who would be ashamed of the mockery that has been made of his birth by the materialistic holiday that exploits the earth and its resources.
We aren’t talking about openly praying in the classroom, we are talking about a room set aside to give students a place to learn healthy ways to cope and deal with life. In that room, I am sure that personal prayer would be allowed.
i need a wellness happy ending
High School is so STRESSFUL! What will our little cherubs do? The makeover of Belfast is almost complete. From rough and tumble blue collar chicken town to Crunchy Liberal town.
Most districts have wellness coordinators who organize such nonessential services for their schools. The public should be informed how much money these “Wellness Coordinators” make in their school districts – surprise! They make more than any teacher on the staffs of the schools they are in. If you doubt me research it by contacting your district and ask; it is public information and the public needs to realize how much administrations in our schools are top heavy and overpaid, and this is for nonessential services.
Please provide some proof to support this claim.
Summer’s, evenings and every holiday off; great pay (despite what we hear; recession proof employment; zero accountability for producing quality – isn’t enough? Now we also need to provide a massage parlor?
Any teacher seen hanging around there during the school day should be fired.
When I taught school years ago we “joked” that we wish we scould switch cars with the kids.MANY teachers take summer classes and generally work summer jobs to pay off college loans.Lots of teachers spend the better part of the evening correcting papers and doing lesson plans.The pay IS VERY LOW for someone with a 4 year degree. Having parents e -mailing and standing in your door after school is plenty of accountability. You know nothing of what teachers do every day. If it’s such a great job, why does the average teacher quit after 3 years? Lot’s of kids fail at school because their parents have let them down, not the teachers.
Sounds like most private sector jobs these days – long hours, evening work from home, demanding clients, high turnover. Only we don’t get summers & holidays off.
You have absolutely NO idea what it is like to teach today’s youth. If you think teaching is a cushy job you need to have your head examined.
Most people with a four year degree make more than $25,000 in their first year of employment. Most teachers work at home on nights and weekends. Most teachers spend hundreds of their own dollars to buy things for the classroom. Most work during the summer to offset their inadequate wages.
If there is a teaching hanging out there, they are to be commended for being a good role model.
Seriously? What happened to just dealing with things? They’re putting their money into this instead of education. My school could use that money!
Did you read the part about volunteers?
Tax payer owned/funded room , that could be put to uses that it was intended.
Most schools have rooms that are not utilized. To me it makes sense to use a room not being utilized for something worthwhile then leaving the room empty.
I find this rediculous!! Buck it up folks and stop allowing our children escapes for all of lifes stress factors!!! How about just laughing off stress and not focusing on it and making a mountain out of a mole hill. I believe in all of these services…………………..but take them to your local homeless shelter/soup kitchen where you will find TRUE STRESS with all the middle class working folks that NO longer have jobs or homes!!!!
Victims of reality, so sad… Pillow please…
This is great. Because, you know, every work place has a wellness room. Way to prepare people for the real world.
They can learn healthy ways to reduce stress so when they get into the real world they will have the skills needed to survive out there. If they learn a good stress reducing practice they will be able to do it anywhere when they are adults and won’t need a wellness room.
Teaching children how to deal with stress in a healthy way is one of the most important lessons to teach our children so that they won’t turn to things like food, drugs, cigarettes or alcohol to cope with adult stress.
The problem is, probably the ones teaching them are the ones who think that when they work a 10-hour day and have to scrounge to make a car payment and have to do more than 2 loads of laundry in a given day, oh yes, AND pick the kids up from daycare and cook dinner, are stressed to the max. What a soft society we’re turning into.
I am not even sure what you are trying to say?
It seems like the Camden area is the “Reiki Master” and licensed massage therapist capital of the world. I lived there for several years and almost every unemployed ex cocktail waitress suddenly (Reiki “Master” takes just a few weeks) had those “qualifications” but still couldn’t make a living at it. After a few years, many of them realized how silly it all was. So, if you can’t make a living selling your services to private individuals, persuade someone that yours is a needed service that the government/taxpayers should pay for. Camden lefty whackjob attitudes are creeping northward. Instead of kids learning that life is tough and they need to earn their self esteem by working hard and overcoming obstacles, they’ll spend time in the wellness room being encouraged to blame everyone but themselves for their problems and lack of ability to cope. One more liberal indoctrinated into the church of no individual responsibility…
None of this stuff is lefty or righty. It can be good stuff. Fact is, though, one is not supposed to charge for Reiki – and most other healing of that sort. My objection is that, plus, this kind of work has become a high-money, less soulful practice – in my opinion. Because living is, indeed, complicated, a bit of energy balancing or whatever don’t hoit. The problem occurs when it is not incorporated into daily living and is made too “special.”
I should say, too, that not everyone who practices anything should be doing so, and it’s important to trust your gut feelings if it’s not a good match – just as with anything else.
And, that there are many who will offer their services for free. Here’s the problem – we don’t live in a culture where getting a dozen eggs in payment will sustain you – so taking money for this work is necessary if you hope to survive. It’s a tough call. This offering at the school will do more good than harm , I think – you can’t argue with that.
And everybody should be able to get therapeutic massage on a regular basis. It’s amazing what a difference it makes. Now, there’s something that should be included in health care.
Reiki is a valuable tool to promote wellness. I am grateful beyond words for those Reiki Masters who worked on my husband in the two years that he was dying after a ten and a half year battle with cancer.
Post 9-11 kids already know that life is tough, but instead of trying to beat someone up or do something harmful to themselves or someone else, they are learning coping skills that they can take through their adult life so that they can have balance and peace within themselves.
These practices don’t focus on blame or avoidance. They focus on letting go, acceptance and on finding ways to deal with the obstacles in a productive and healthy way. This actually promotes individual responsibility. It teaches one how to deal with their internal confusion and frustration rather than looking outside themselves to find ways to cope or on blaming others for how they feel internally.
We may save a child or two from suicide or from gunning down their fellow students or from turning to food, drugs, alcohol and cigarettes as a way of coping.
It is possible to track the demise of the “teacher’s lounge” where smoking was allowed, along with the demise of donuts offered in schools and businesses, with the downfall of education, quality in business, actual health care, and general ill-humor and lack of consciousness about other people’s needs.
In 1972 Bangor High School had the “smoking area” -right outside the cafateria as the stress reducing area for a fairly large number of the students. Would that be better than this stress room?
Your tax dollars at work! Forget about reading, writing & arithmetic.
The article says that they can only utilize it during study hall or lunch. Everyone working there is volunteering their time. How are tax dollars being spent on this project?
I would need a Wellness Room with a six pack of Heineken if I had to deal with some of today’s kids.
Wouldn’t need one if there wasn’t so much mental illness up here – incest, drugs, alcohol and sexual abuse. Never seen so much mental illness concentrated in a geographic area as small as Waldo County. We need an inpatient mental health facility in Waldo County, plain and simple…
Where is the “STRESSED-OUT” room for the taxpayers located.
When we find out we will have to get there early as it will fill up fast!
They should have a drum circle room too, with the sweet wafting scent of patchouli and a life-size statue of Dear Leader to worship.
Got to be kidding me..
What next..
>>>>
I wish I could agree with you, and if I thought for a moment that were the key to keeping kids off drugs, I’d be all for it. I think the problem with kids today is not that they don’t know how to deal with stress, but they think life is SUPPOSED to be easy and that everything is supposed to go their way. Something upsets their day and they need to run and get away from it by de-stressing and relaxing rather than facing the problems and realizing that life is NOT easy and with every challenge is a lesson learned.
>>>><<<<
Reiki is a valuable tool to promote wellness. I am grateful beyond words for those Reiki Masters who worked on my husband in the two years that he was dying after a ten and a half year battle with cancer.
Post 9-11 kids already know that life is tough, but instead of trying to beat someone up or do something harmful to themselves or someone else, they are learning coping skills that they can take through their adult life so that they can have balance and peace within themselves.
These practices don’t focus on blame or avoidance. They focus on letting go, acceptance and on finding ways to deal with the obstacles in a productive and healthy way. This actually promotes individual responsibility. It teaches one how to deal with their internal confusion and frustration rather than looking outside themselves to find ways to cope or on blaming others for how they feel internally.
We may save a child or two from suicide or from gunning down their fellow students or from turning to food, drugs, alcohol and cigarettes as a way of coping.
Prayer might help them with this also, is a picture of Jesus allowed in this room, maybe a Cross?
As long as pictures and symbols of Allah, Buddha and other religions key figures Are you OK with that?
I bet that those who continue to insist that public school K-12 teachers have well paid, easy jobs with limited hours would be outraged if professional athletes were deprived of any hours in plush locker rooms, etc. So many Americans who would do anything to promote professional athletes simultaneously hate teachers because, among other things, they use their minds more than their bodies. Anyone who argues that American teachers don’t work long hours after their classroom hours end never knew any dedicated teachers. Pathetic but traditional American anti-intellectualism.
What do professional athletes have to do with teachers, public schools, and the Wellness Room?
Wholly crap. Whats next waiters to serve them lunch so as not to overburden them by forcing them to get there own food?
One question. For our faithful students, can we put up a Cross, so they might pray and comfort themselves?
I’m sure they would be able to carry their own cross with them and there is nothing keeping them from personal prayer.
It’s a slippery slope though if you allow one religion into the school, then that means all others can also. Are you OK with Muslims, Buddhists or Wiccans doing the same?
You have made my point , or asked the same question that I am asking,where is the line? What is the difference between a lot of the this (not so) New age silliness and a religion? Reiki is a spiritual practice developed by a Japanese Buddhist, with secret symbols only revealed to those found worthy, ceremonies rewarding the obtainment of levels of spirituality and understanding. Somehow a small group of us has been given the power to decide what is or is not acceptable. They have been allowed to demarcate religion and spirituality .Alot of what they call Spiritual ,and thus exempt from the restrictions put on religion, are little different then those aspects of religion they are so actively against. More re branding is all this is. No more or less dangerous in the wrong hands. The Deity of Me,Reiki .
Ironically each time that I have had Reiki done or my husband had it done, it was always by devoted Christians who had learned Reiki because of Christ’s emphasis on healing people through the laying on of hands. Christ led the New Age movement actually.
During the sessions, very little is said. There is no reference to spirituality or religion, no encouragement to convert to any specific spiritual or religious belief. The practitioners share nothing about their beliefs or try to impose them on the client. It is purely an act of love.
It’s sad that you find these practices silly. I guess perhaps you haven’t read enough about the miracles that Christ performed and his focus on healing others. It’s is a wonderful thing to see something so simple have such a tremendous impact on the health or quality of life of someone who is suffering physically, mentally, emotionally or within their spirit.
The difference between spirituality and religion is that spirituality embraces no particular religion. It is not associated with any religious dogma. Spirituality focuses on an individual’s connection to the human spirit, to the self. Spirituality allows one to reflect on where one fits in the larger scheme of things so that an individual one can be fully present, fully alive and therefore get the most out of the human experience.
There are no rules and regulations of spirituality because the focus is on the spirit and not on conversion as most religions focus on.
Whats with the secret symbols of Reiki ? Pay enough money, learn the secret handshake? Sounds like another hippy pyramid scheme to me. More concerning, it might be substituted for real medicine and cost someone precious time needed to treat a real ailment.
There is no such thing as real medicine.
rocky marshall… ha ha ha
I looked him up, handsome fella.
how you doin rocky?
why do you hide behind your facebook page mr. marshall?
LOL, could I be more obvious?