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Choose one video, success story, or research study and reflect on what influencer tactics were used and why these would be important as you develop into a health promotion manager in your future career.
I watched the video on Spectrum Health. They shared about how they use the influencer model and how it has been successful in changing the compliance of hand washing in their hospital. Some influencer tactics they used was finding vital behaviors. The 3 that they found were:
1. People need to take action on their behavior
2. create and environment that is safe to have the conversations on behaviors
3. develop a holistic approach on accountability - holding themselves accountable as well as each other.
They used these vital behaviors along with the influencer model and saw dramatic results. Hand washing complience went from 50% to over 90%. They found that having people be help accountable for their actions caused them to hold other people account able and not only with hand washing but other things like client safety.
This video helped me see that sometimes it take a few tries to see if things will work, there is no silver bullet. But, you have to be ready to make that change and keep trying until it's working. Holding people accountable can be really good for the work environment as well.

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1.  Focus and Measure - reflect on this concept and think about what you are really wanting to change and how would you measure that change and show success?
Our overall goal is to educate teachers on how they can help children live healthier lives by supporting their nutrition needs in the classroom. Some ways to really measure if they teachers are accomplishing that goal would be to give the children surveys as well as the teachers. We can keep in touch in the teachers to see how the program they implement is running smoothly.

2.  Find Vital Behaviors - reflect and select the one or two vital behaviors that are really driving the problem you are addressing.  What are the MOST IMPORTANT one(s) to address?
Two vital behaviors would first be the environment, meaning if the classroom endorses negative eating habits the child could carry that on until adulthood and the second is the teachers overall education on healthy eating.

3. Engage all Six Sources of Influence - reflect on the six sources of influence and think about your strategy and methods.  How would you plan to diffuse these into your project so you actually make a difference?
Structure Ability: A shift in the structures environment would need to happen, it has to become a norm within the school to create change.
Structural Motivation: School have the opportunity to post signs and posters on the walls to motivate the students to adapt. healthy habits.
Social Ability: It everyone around the child changes, the child will see that they want to belong to a group of healthy decision makers too.
Social Motivation: If the children are seeing other students, teachers, and other school staff eating healthy they will be motivated to create those healthy habits.
Personal Ability: I believe as the teachers talk more about how the children can learn to make healthier choices the children will actually see that it is possible. If the child knows they have a little power over the decisions they can choose better options.
Personal Motivation: If teachers use healthy rewards such as an extra recess or extra stretch breaks the children will become more motivated to work towards that goal.

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The goal of my activity break is to get students to see all the ways they can be physically active without just going to the gym. My choice of break was a game of exercise charades. The classroom was divided into two teams and they completed against each other to see who could guess the right exercise. Each side would have 15 seconds to guess. It will also make students laugh and get them to stop thinking about class for a little while.

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Chapter 2:8 in Influencer and Chapter 3:7 in the Worksite Wellness That Works both address how to motivate individuals in changing behavior.  How would you use this information to create a motivating way to get people to adopt the behavior you are addressing in your genius hour project?
In order to create a behavior change with the teacher, we want to make sure they see value in the potential changes. Along with seeing value in improving the wellness of children we could also use some type of incentive to keep the teachers motivated each month to keep on the changes. I think a cool incentive for both the teachers and children would be to set wellness goals each month and if they reach it the children get something as well as the teachers. It could be a free recess for the students that the teacher gets to take time for themselves. Overall, I think if we reward the right behaviors, incentives could be useful.

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Updates on our genius hour project: We have decided to change out topic idea once again. Our goal now is to focus on the teachers, so that they can influence the children to eat right. Our new driving question is, how can we improve the nutrition of elementary school aged children through their teachers? The teachers will be the one’s sending out newsletters through email about nutrition and the upcoming programs/workshops. We plan to train the teachers, so they know what to do and can make effective changes in their classrooms. We want to train teachers on a few different topics relating to nutrition in their classrooms like not using food as rewards. Children can begin to attach emotion to food because of this. We also want to encourage teachers to allow water bottles or take water breaks a few times a day to promote hydration. Once the teachers are trained, we can then move onto a different school and teach them. We completed the before workshop survey which will be emailed out to all the parents/caregivers and the we also completed the after-workshop survey and they fill it out right after the workshop and turn it in. Some other updates we have done include adding for background information, especially tailored to teachers and healthy eating habits.

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How does your Genius Hour project use or build social capital? Use specific ideas from the Influencer book to support your reflection.

A way that my Genius Hour project used social capital is in the way it provides assistance to the teachers. Our goal is to be able to reach and communicate with the teachers of elementary aged children and share information with them about how to positively impact the nutrition on the children they work with. We are providing many different types of services and assistance to them.
Putnam Chapter 3:9 covers experiential learning and concepts involved in that model.  How can you help those you want to change behaviors use the experiential learning theory and develop the growth mind set?
The people of whom we really want to see the behavior change from is the parents, or main caretakers of the children. One way to reach the parents and children is through the teachers. Some of the best ways to create this behavior change is to have a program that contains practice, feedback, evaluation, and application. This will help not only us but also the people we trying to reach. We need to get teachers out of the fixed mindset they can only do what the school provides them with. We really want to equip teachers with the knowledge to think outside the box and be innovators within their classrooms and find new ways to teach healthy nutrition and healthy eating habits to the children.

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How would you use Putnam's ideas of "Creating Meaning" for the population you are targeting in the topic for your Genius hour?  As the opning states, we have to help them know their "WHY."  What of the many ideas presented this week help you get buying from your group?
For my group, we are focusing on elementary aged children. We want to promote healthy eating habits and allow the parents the opportunity to learn what is best for their children as well. I think it would be very beneficial for children to learn their "why" at a young age so they group up feeling like they have a purpose. If they know their why at a young age it can carry with them through adolescents and can promote other dimensions of wellness to be healthy as well.

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As you listened to the Genius Hour Presentations about the driving questions, consider your groups' focus and how on track you feel you are in moving forward to develop your project/product.  As a way to revisit where you started in your mind-map, ask and answer these two questions about your project:

Why do I/we want to be an Influencer?” and “Who do I/we want to influence?
I want to be an influencer because I want to start a movement for children that actually works. This means taking a look at the parents and figuring out how I can help the children by going through the parents, even teachers or day-care workers as well. Mostly, the people who are around the children the most. I want to influence them because they have the most influence on the children.

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My groups driving question is  "How can we improve the whole well-being of school aged children through their parents?".
How can you use the six sources of influence to create your solution to this problem?
We can use the six sources of influence to solve our problem in many ways. We have to find ways to inspire the parents to want to make a change in their daily lives. We will equip parents with the knowledge to live healthy and how to find fun and exciting ways to do so. We have to show parents that they have the skill, ability, and understanding to improve the lives of their children. We can do this by doing seminars or holding health fair and events at their children's school. We can connect parents with other parents who model healthy lifestyles and are creating safe environments for their children's whole well-being. If we educate the children as well as the parents they have each other as support. It really is about showing the parents what is possible for them to do and encourage them to help their children.
What information to date has been covered in the Putnam book that can help guide your in group's investigation into your topic?
The Putnam book talked about the factors that make a difference and I found that really important in out research because we wanted to find credible evidence that programming for parents really worked. It was nice to have a list of factors to compare the articles with.

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1. Can you identify one way all the material we have covered (through Wed. Feb. 20) links together in a best, promising, or emerging practice methodology?
I think one of the ways all of the information we've learned thus far links with best promising, or emerging practice is through people who have made the decision to an influencer. Wellness practices would be neither best or promising nor would be they emerging it it wasn't for a someone who decided there was an issue and it need to be resolved or helped in some way. It takes someone who is willing to lead and influence other people to promote a certain practice.

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Ideas can change the world, but only when coupled with influence - the ability to change hearts, minds, and behavior.
Muhammud Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize Winner.

1. How can you interpret the information presented so far in the Influencer book to reflect on this statement?  What principles help you agree or disagree with the statement?
This week the teaching group talked about goals and the 3 keys of influence. When I read the statement, the first thing I thought of was setting goals. The 3 keys that were discussed are what takes your goal to the next level. Making a SMART goal is very important and in order to have it work successfully, it has to have focus and measure, find vital behaviors, as well as engage in all 6 sources of influence. (Most of them, anyways)

2.  What is your vision of wellness using the principals promoted in Workplace Wellness that Works book?  Use Putnam's to imagine what is possible to create an innovative wellness program.
My wellness movement is to encourage young adults and children to live healthy lifestyles that support their mental health as well as their whole wellbeing. In order to make an innovated program the parent and teachers have to be on board with creating change because that who the children and adolescents spend most of their time with.

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The thing that made me the most curious this week was getting into the topic of being an influencer as well as making a change from expert to agent of change. I'm really interested to read more. I think the thinking portion that brought me the most satisfaction this week was the brainstorming activity. I liked it because I was able to just let ideas flow and write down whatever I felt like and I just enjoy doing things like that. I don't really feel like I contributed that much to the class as a whole. However, as we worked in groups I was able to offer my insights. I think in the future I could participate more to help the whole class learn more.

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This week I learned something new in regards to best practice. I learned that sometimes something that is considered best practice for the general population doesn't mean it is the best practice for everyone. I also learned some things can fit promising, emerging, and best practice all at the same time. How I can apply what I know about best practice as a Health Promotion Manager is to really be aware of what my clients are capable of and not assume what is best practice for one person is best practice for all my clients. One thing I would love to learn more about is how to address the situation where a best practice doesn't fit my client per say because I think it would be beneficial to learn how to suggest other things.