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Our Mental Health and COVID-19: A Message From Felicity’s Clinical Team

To Our Felicity Community,

Where do we even begin to know how to process this? How about some good news? You are not alone! This is an unusual time for all of us and a brand new challenge in adaptation, expecting the unexpected and restructuring time management strategies.

In order to address the impact of CO-VID19 on us as individuals, we wanted to include some perspective to keep in mind:

  • Consider the resources that you may be reading, there are many sources being shown online, specifically social media, that may not have the most updated and factual data regarding health risks.
  • Pay attention to when you may need a break from the news or if you need to set a boundary with someone in your life who is giving you a lot of information at once (i.e. “I can hear that you are very concerned, but I think it is time to focus on a new topic right now”).
  • Try new things! Use this opportunity to organize a closet, cook yourself or your family a nice meal, make a new routine, walk outside for thirty minutes a day, take a break from your phone!
  • Maintain relationships with your loved ones, consistent contact with people we care about may help ourselves and the other person in more ways than one.
  • Re-frame negative thoughts. Psychology studies show that our thoughts influence our behavior, perspective of situations and can even affect our physical health with increased stress levels. Writing down a couple of things in your life that you are grateful for each day may encourage mindfulness, otherwise known as the act of being present.

For more information, the list below includes some great resources from mental health professionals to help all that may be struggling with how to cope at this stressful time:

Last but not least, please do not hesitate to reach out to Felicity’s clinical team for support and suggestions on how to navigate strategies to adapt to the impact of CO-VID19 on the community. The staff email directory is found on the “Contact” tab of the website. Stay Healthy, Inside and Out, Felicity Community!
-Felicity’s Clinicians: Mollie Swillum, Hazel Patel and Sarah Greenawalt

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Adventures at Athletico

Recently, our students have been given the opportunity to visit Athletico, a recreational sports center nearby, due to Mr. Nekritz having ownership of the building and wanting to utilize a new space for our students. Athletico has a number of indoor soccer fields that can be used for students to participate in team sports such as Flag Football, Soccer and Capture The Flag. Featured in the photo above is one of our middle school students with one of our high school teachers playing a game of Capture the Flag.

All students are able to get the opportunity to participate for P.E. credit, given there are no documented behavioral incidents prior to attending. In fact, the Felicity team was able to make an agreement with students to make Athletico a weekly tradition on every Wednesday for an extended P.E. opportunity. This is a helpful opportunity to break up the day and have extra space to get some pent up energy out before continuing a day of academics.

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Felicity Pets

Here at Felicity, we have two terrariums and a fish tank in one of our common areas. Our principal, Dr. Dignam, has taken care of terrariums similar in the past and wanted the students to have a similar learning experience. This has been a great chance for students in the common area to look into the terrariums during breaks, have an ongoing project throughout the school year of making the terrariums feel like home and pet the bearded dragon or geckos with staff supervision.

On a weekly basis, students have the opportunity to assist with the care and maintenance of a bearded dragon, two geckos and a variety of fish. Students are able to accompany staff to the pet store for supplies, do research on appropriate care for each of the pets for science credit, help other students feel comfortable interacting with the pets and more. In fact, some of our students have even been working on persuading their families to get similar pets!

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Buddah Warriors

For the past five months, Gina and Jodi from Buddah Warrior have been working with our Felicity students. Every Tuesday during P.E., each of the instructors separate the P.E. class into two sections, one section for students who want a high impact workout with Gina. The workouts provided during high impact P.E. include: self-defense techniques and cardio kickboxing.  This is a great space for students to try different types of workouts in a P.E. class setting on a more consistent basis.

For the students who are not interested in a high impact P.E. workout, Jodi guides some of the students through practicing mindfulness and meditation exercises. “After mindfulness, the kids have said they feel a sense of calm for about 1-2 hours after the exercises” high school teacher Mr. Watson states. Mindfulness groups with Jodi from Buddah Warriors give students the opportunities to journal about being present in the moment and setting intentions for the day ahead, it encourages students to slow down and take the day one moment at a time to reduce previous patterns of impulsive behavior.

Recently, the Buddah Warriors and some of our Felicity team was featured on a news segment regarding self-defense practices! Please visit this link to check it out: https://wgntv.com/2020/01/22/around-town-learns-cobra-self-defense-with-the-buddha-warrior-girls/

For more general information about Buddah Warrior workouts and philosophies, please visit, https://www.buddhawarriors.com/

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Felicity's New Building and Recent Changes

At the start of the 2019-2020 school year, we successfully moved into our new building! Our new address is 550 Lake Cook Road in Deerfield. We are now located in the Old Berto Center, which is also known as the famous Chicago Bulls practice space. For footage of where Chicago Bulls history took place at the facility, we recommend watching the documentary “The Last Dance”, which includes the famous Michael Jordan retirement press conference footage, which took place in our current gym!

Specifically, the majority of our classroom and academic space is on the second floor, with the exception of two downstairs classroom spaces and our gymnasium. Please see the featured photos for a preview of our new home.

Some of our upgrades include: additional comfortable seating for students to study, a terrarium and fish tank for students to help take care of, a newly finished basketball court, four spacious classrooms with two staff members accessible to assist students with academic success and general support, three clinician offices, a larger main office space for our administrative assistant and principal and a number of additional classroom-sized rooms for added space for activities.

In addition, we have a number of new staff members joining the Felicity team as we gain more and more new students! Joining us, we have our new school principal Dr. Chris Dignam, with over 20 years of administrative experience in the field of education. We also have a new middle school teacher joining us with over 20 years of experience in special education, Ms. Stephanie Horwitz. Last but not least, we have three new clinicians on staff, Ms. Patel, Ms. Greenawalt and Ms. Swillum. Our new clinicians come to Felicity with a variety of different backgrounds in the mental health field to provide new perspectives to support our Felicity students.

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The Willis Tower Skydeck Adventure

Mr. Luskin and Mr. Watson have been working with a number of high school students on a direct instruction math course as well as designing hands on activities to practice the skills learned and keep students engaged. To this end, these staff designed the last field trip of 2019 to include a trip to Willis (formerly known as Sears) Tower to apply skills of skyscraper measurements and connect the relevance to Chicago architecture.

There were 6 students in attendance, some of which overcame their fear of heights, with the trip to the skydeck and were able to take in a beautiful view of the city. Back in class, students are designing model skyscrapers based on their math knowledge and real-life experience.

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CAAEL Volleyball: the 2019-2020 Season

Each week during Felicity’s fall semester, students are offered an opportunity to play volleyball with other schools participating in the CAAEL volleyball games over the Fall season. Our volleyball coach, Mr. Bolek, determines eligibility of students playing based on number of completed assignments for the week and appropriate behavior during each school day. Felicity students have done extremely well with sportsmanship and overall participation for each game.

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Chicago Bulls Game!


As most of you may be aware, we are currently housed in the old Berto Center in Deerfield, which means the Chicago Bulls have a special place in our hearts and minds at Felicity. On November 25 2019, twenty lucky students had the opportunity to attend a Chicago Bulls game at the United Center. The Bulls played the Portland Trailblazers this Monday night game and unfortunately took a loss, with a final score of 94-117.

However, the real win of the game was being able to take a picture on half court while the Chicago Bulls had their warm up before the game! Coach Wilhelm of the Bulls has met our kids and is excited, like us, to see additional growth in the relationship between the Chicago Bulls and Felicity School.  We are honored to pay tribute to the Chicago Bulls, past, present and future any time we are able.