Part of the action plan to make America’s children healthier includes schools adding healthy living lessons to their curricula, and forming wellness committees that are tasked with generating new ideas on how to motivate students to get active.
Incorporating movement into lesson plans has been a quiet goal in education for several years—now it’s everywhere and louder than ever. Some private schools ISM has had the pleasure of working with over the past few years have had some creative ideas to keep children up and moving about. Certainly, Montessori schools have always had movement, interaction, and engaged, hands-on learning as their mission.
Now, perhaps because of the influence of Michelle Obama, schools public and private alike are trying to find ways to weave movement into traditional lessons. Some are substituting fitness balls for desks, extending unstructured playtime, building gardens so kids can get hands-on experience with healthy, natural foods (download our Community Garden PDF), and investing in professional development to help their staff learn new ways to create interactive, engaged lesson plans.
Healthy schools don’t start and stop in the classroom, however. The entire faculty and staff should be role models, and what a better place to start than with your school’s wellness program. The following steps are from the “Let’s Move” Web site.
- Evaluate worksite policies for teachers and other school staff.
- Determine employee health-related costs.
- Identify nutrition and physical activity interests and needs of school employees.
- Establish goals for improving healthy behaviors among staff (e.g., increase the proportion of school employees that meet the national physical activity guidelines).
- Obtain administrative support for school employee wellness programs that offer a variety of healthy eating and physical activities for staff.
- Implement a variety of healthy eating and physical activities that emphasize health education, skill-building, and changes to the school environment.
- Consider making changes to create a healthier workplace, such as including incentives for physical activity, or walking or biking instead of driving to school.
- Encourage "walking meetings," or make athletic facilities and equipment available to staff after hours.
- Lead by example. Walk with your students, and eat with them.
But, it’s more than what happens in the classroom. It’s deeper than teaching our children about healthy diets. And, it’s beyond primetime programming about healthy lifestyles. Although it also includes all these elements, the issue must start the healing process at its core.
Reversing the rising percentages of childhood obesity must start inside each and every home. That’s why Michelle Obama’s campaign includes several approaches. The Let’s Move Web site is packed with pages of information for students, schools, and parents. But, its number 1 mission is to educate parents about cost-effective, healthy food options, and exercises all members of the household can participate in such as a nightly stroll through your neighborhood. When a family’s lifestyle habits are poor, it affects everyone.
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