The 2025–26 school year featured student articles, reflections, videos, and illustrations about Making Healthy Connections. The reporting theme that encouraged students to explore how connections shape people’s well-being.
Throughout the year, students researched and conducted interviews on empathy, social connections, and the ways art and music can support wellness. They examined the relationships in their own lives, created projects about building healthy connections, and interviewed teachers and community members about the role connection plays in overall health.
They also had the opportunity to interview a number of health experts, artists, and community leaders about the importance of connections. They interviewed Dr. Daniel Taylor, a pediatrician at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children about the value of social connection, Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia about empathy and how it brings people together, and cardboard artist Kambel Smith about creativity, resilience, and self-expression.
An eighth-grade reporter at The DePaul Catholic School said that speaking with Kambel Smith, “changed how I think about people. All people are different. The human spirit is indomitable.”
Students also had the opportunity to interview professional soccer player Quinn Sullivan about teamwork, perseverance, and finding your place within a group.
“It was a very fun experience meeting Quinn”, said a Chester Charter Scholars Academy reporter. “He told us how it felt playing on a team with people much older than him and gave us advice on how to cope if we were ever in that situation.”
Twenty student ambassadors also got to lead discussions among Healthy NewsWorks community members at Healthy Conversations in late April. The event featured films students produced throughout the year as well as a Q&A with the ambassadors. About 150 people attended the event, including families, teachers, school leaders, supporters, and Healthy NewsWorks staff and board members.
The event was one of the highlights of the year. “The experience that meant the most to me was being an ambassador for Healthy NewsWorks,” said a fifth-grade reporter from Yorkship Famliy School. “I loved being able to show and experience everything we did in our school.”
Some of the Core reporters’ work appears in the Spring 2026 magazine, which features articles, reflections, and artwork inspired by students’ learning over the year. More work from the 2025-26 school year will appear in the Fall 2026 magazine, which will be available soon!
