School sanctions time
for the whole student

The New Moon Club is a twenty-eight-day wellbeing initiative structured around the lunar cycle. Students are nominated by their teachers — identified as individuals who would benefit from a dedicated non-academic space — and invited to set one personal goal for the duration of the cycle.

A counter to the
academic grind

In high-achieving school environments, students frequently internalize the message that their value is inseparable from their grades. The New Moon Club is a deliberate counter to that message. It creates a structured, school-sanctioned space in which students are asked to take their own joy, creativity, connection, and wellbeing seriously — not as a break from "real" school, but as an equally legitimate form of growth.

Students were nominated by their teachers — not self-selected — which itself carries a message: your teachers see you as more than your academic performance, and they want to invest in that.

The lunar cycle as
a gentle framework

At the opening meeting — timed to the new moon — students complete a brainstorming activity and set their intention for the cycle. Goals fall across four categories:

Students then join a shared Google Space where coordinators post phase-specific prompts across the lunar cycle. The cycle closes with a final reflection meeting and celebration. Students earn two Learner Development hours for completing the full cycle. Invitations were designed as scratch-off cards — a small, considered detail that signaled to students that this was something worth being curious about.

CASEL & PERMA

The New Moon Club is grounded primarily in Self-Awareness within CASEL — the capacity to recognize one's own needs, values, and sources of meaning. Within the PERMA model, it directly addresses Positive Emotion, Engagement, and Relationships, each reinforced through the phases of intention, action, and reflection. The club is deliberately low-stakes: the emphasis is on effort and self-awareness rather than success or performance.