EXTRA! EXTRA! Inlet Grove students have been producing an Employee Wellness Newsletter for the staff since 2014.

“Whenever I get the newsletter in my email the first thing I look for is the recipe section,” said Mrs. Madappurkal, Medical Academy teacher at IGHS. “I love seeing all of the healthy dishes, it’s my favorite.”

The publication curently is produced by the Wellness Newsletter Team in Mr. Hanif’s fourth period Journalism class. The newsletter began as an idea from the school district to encourage employees to be examples of health and wellness for each other and for the students.

“An employee wellness newsletter will be sent out electronically each month to encourage good behaviors, habits, promote overall health and present various district endorsed campaigns,” said Medical Academy teacher Mrs. Blair in an initial email to Mr. Hanif. “If you would like to have your students assemble it with content I provide please let me know,” she said. “Great idea. Let me have my Health Project team talk with you,” replied Mr. Hanif.

Since then the newsletter has been completed once a month by the students with content developed in collaboration with Mrs. Blair. It includes a monthly theme, several health related articles, a healthy dish recipe and more.  Mr. Hanif and Mrs. Blair provide revisions or suggestions throughout the process before it is emailed by Mrs. Blair to the employees.

Each term the newsletter is produced by a new set of students. The first Wellness Newsletter Team was led by Medical Academy student Breanna Moore and included Ciara Gayle, Wisline Gedeome and Lily Etienne. They covered topics such as Healthy Eating, Dieting, Exercising and the importance of reducing stress.

A new team of student journalists then picked up the project including Alissa Gibbs, Sadeeka Whitfield and Glendy Perez.

The 2015-2016 Wellness Newsletter Team included Osmara Salazar, Edwina Antoine, Daniel Dumervil, Brenda Joseph and Cassidy Burke.

As the current editor it is my job to organize, illustrate and coordinate through to the distribution of the newsletter. It’s a good fit, given that I am a junior in the Medical Academy.

I look forward to trying it again with my new team next year.