Following the Marlborough administration’s decision to remove the Health class requirement for juniors at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, the Health Education Department created a new system to keep older students informed about the health resources the school provides. That year, Health instructors held mandatory mini-sessions to continue the students’ health education rather than dedicating a semester-long course to Health 11.
However, recent updates have changed this programming. Since the start of the 2025-26 school year, 11th and 12th graders have participated in longer and more frequent health workshops during community time, advisory or class meetings.
With the large-scale sessions, more faculty members have contributed to their coordination, including the Upper School deans and Head of Upper School Regina Rosi Mitchell. The instructors of each session, Interim Health Program Head Ari Tuluenga and Health and Wellness Instructor Jacqueline Rosas are at the forefront of session preparations.
“We meet every couple of months and realize from the all-grade-wide spectrum of what education needs to happen,” Tuluenga said.
Covering topics like safe sex, STDs and fentanyl awareness, these workshops are intended to encompass a semester’s worth of material. However, the limited time to cover a vast range of content poses challenges to the team.
“It’s at least a semester’s worth of content, and usually we’re cramming an entire unit into just 30 minutes, which can be a little difficult,” Tuluenga said.
Another challenge that came up was teaching a larger group rather than the normal class size. The main drawback of a larger class is that the scale hinders the ability to have more personal discussions, resulting in a more generalized teaching of the content for students.
“A smaller space provides a more intimate setting for you to learn about health versus a class meeting where people just want to get to the next class and quickly go over the slides,” Olivia ’27 said.
These obstacles are especially prominent when it comes to gathering an entire grade to discuss sensitive health-related topics.
Despite these drawbacks, many students find this change of pace toward the health curriculum to be extremely refreshing and beneficial.
“I really like how it’s catered towards the specific grade that you’re in because we’re in a different time of our lives,” Ellis ’27 said.
The Health Department plans to continue this implementation in subsequent years, also hoping to increase awareness around the scheduling of the health session. This will include getting it on the Marlborough calendar sooner and notifying the class of its approach.
Tuluenga especially emphasizes her goal of maximizing efficient organization and communication of junior and senior health sessions to further accommodate students’ extremely busy agendas.
