Welcome

I'm going to relate the lessons I've learned from my students in my health classroom through stories I have from our class discussions, assignments, and interactions. Feel free to share some of your own "lessons learned" through the lessons you've taught your students. If you're not in education, perhaps you can relate lessons you have learned from children at some point in your life. Look forward to sharing stories!

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Life of an Athlete

This summer, I have had the opportunity to attend a conference called Life of an Athlete. The program is an international program that our state athletic association hosted for all school districts in the state of New Hampshire. Life of an Athlete is a program for students athletes and coaches to improve athletic performance related to all sports. The program focuses on sport training, nutrition, sleep, alcohol/tobacco/drug use. It is a fabulous program that gets students focused on maintaining a healthy lifestyle while they are involved in high school athletics. I attended with several coaches from my high school and learned a tremendous amount about improving performance. Our high school sent about 15 students to the Life of an Athlete training following our workshop to get trained in the same concepts. They attended a 3 day seminar.

The training addressed the need for 8-10 hours of sleep for athletes (teens also) to allow their brain (CNS) to recover from sport activity. Intense performance may take 48 hours for full CNS recovery and about 24 hours for physical recovery. Protein and carbs are necessary to get into your system within 10 minutes of sport practice or game. One episode of being drunk results in 14 days of lost performance. A person will not reach their peak performance ability for two weeks following that excessive drinking. For more: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Life-of-an-Athlete/157110224306768

Lesson Learned:


Give a kid an inch and they'll take a mile! I love that this saying fits with these concepts. Today I attended a Life of an Athlete meeting with our student athletes and coaches and administrators. It was so incredible to hear the students plan our Athletic Awareness night and care about educating their peers on these concepts. Our students are going to share what they learned and the expectations they have for their peers at an awareness meeting next week before all fall sports start for the season. The lesson I have learned from this is that there are high school students who really do care about doing the right thing in regards to decision making, sportsmanship, drugs/alcohol/drugs, and team goal setting. I am very excited to see students invested in changing the school culture and the culture of the community. I realize this takes time and I think the students do too. I am hoping to see the positive change (even a small one) this year.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Tweeting Into Trouble

We have probably all heard of incidences where our students or students we know have misused social media in some way and dealt with consequences. Prior to this past year, I had never had a personal encounter with a student inappropriately using SM. At the end of the year, unfortunately, I had several incidences. One of my students tweeted something vulgar and inappropriate about me (as their teacher) on twitter. This post was written while she was in my class and using her phone at a time that she wasn't supposed to be. She ended up getting in trouble faster than I even knew about it. Another student reported her post. One other incident that comes to mind is former students who are still in high school Tweeting vine video clips of themselves at parties, which could get them into a lot of trouble due to their alcohol consumption in the videos.

Lesson Learned:


First thing to learn from this is that more social media education needs to be occurring with students. This girl tweeted her frustrations without thinking them through. Whispering your opinion to the person next to you is a lot different than tweeting your opinion for all your high school friends to see at once (as well as comment on or retweet). Posting incriminating information like videos or pictures with your friends tagged in them could be detrimental in a lot of ways. Secondly, twitter can be a great tool for getting information out quickly to your students and parents when it is used appropriately. Smartphones and other tablet devices are welcomed in our school so many students and parents are accessing web 2.0 tools all the time--mostly social media. Using this in a classroom could really increase engagement, which I feel is one of the benefits of using them.



social media tips for teachers
Picture taken from http://www.edudemic.com/2013/08/my-5-best-social-media-tips-for-teachers/

Monday, August 5, 2013

Reality Check

Last year my students completed an electronic portfolio to demonstrate their learning and growth in the health competencies. The students created a webpage that had pages for each competency followed by uploaded assignments that were considered artifacts. These artifacts, or assignments, showed evidence that these students had met the competencies. Along with the artifacts students had to write reflections about each artifact explaining what the assignment was and how the process of completing the assignment/assessment/project helped them meet the competency. We also included a page called, "Health in My Life." This page was devoted to students reflecting on experiences they felt were valuable in the course and how they would use what they learned to live healthy lives in the future. It was neat reading them because many students reflected on the assignments that were most valuable and the life skills that they said they gained from them. Some of the things they mentioned included: Food Shopping on a Budget, Fitness Planning, Supplement Analysis, Addiction Analysis, Eating Disorder Analysis, Restaurant Project called Eat This Not That, and more.

Lesson Learned:

Keep your assignments and your lessons relevant to real life as often as possible. Students are more likely to be engaged if it something of personal relevance to them or they can use in their future. Many students shared with me that they were glad that they had the chance to practice shopping for groceries because they have never had to do it before. They learned a lot of strategies for shopping with a limited budget and they also learned how to plan out healthy meals while making their food last all week so that it wasn't wasted. What assignments do you give that are teaching life skills or information for the future?