Health Annotations by Dangelo, Zoe

How social media platforms impact kid and teen mental health

zd968467_1 — 2024-04-23 20:54:10 UTC

This article on how social media platforms impact kid and teen mental health from PBS dives into the negative effects that social media is having on our youth. They speak about how in this day in time, since COVID, many children have chosen to stay online, on their phones and inside rather than get outside, play with their friends and be social because this what they are used to. COVID-19 pushed a lot of students into depressive phases that they may never have experienced before because they were not able to socialize with others their own age and had to rely on their devices to communicate with their friends and peers. According to Weigle, there has been a drastic increase in children's mental and physical health due to social media. Many children nowadays are experiencing a lot of neck and finger pain from constantly looking down at their devices and using their thumbs to text away. This article pertains to teaching health in K-4 classrooms because nowadays, technology is just at the finger tips of most students across the world. More and more students are receiving their own iPads for school or chrome books to just name a few devices. Teachers should try to limit the students screentime in the classroom because who knows how much screen time they receive at home and how it can negatively affect their students each and every day.

Ellis, N. (2021, October 28). Watch: How social media platforms impact kid and teen mental health. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/watch-live-how-social-media-platforms-impact-kid-and-teen-mental-health

Healthy eating curriculum may contribute to eating disorders in kids

zd968467_1 — 2024-04-23 20:58:45 UTC

This article on healthy eating curriculum may contribute to eating disorders in kids from The Washington Post shares a story of a mom and daughter who struggle with their relationships with food. In schools, health and physical education teachers seem to be classifying certain foods as good and bad foods. Parents and teachers of course want all their students to eat "healthy" foods since we are taught from a young age that fruits and vegetables help us grow up to be big and strong. However, that can be a lot counterproductive to some people. That phrase might be doing more harm than good. Rather than explicitly saying you should eat this kind of food over this one because it's more healthy, we should teaching students good decision-making skills when it comes to picking foods. If they are educated and have the knowledge to know why one food might be classified as healthier over another, then they might be more inclined to make that decision for themselves. This article pertains to teaching health in the K-4 classroom because it isn't just up to the PE teacher to teach our students good decision-making skills. Some classrooms might have a "class snack corner" for students who might get hungry during the day or could forget their lunch. It's important to give students a balance of choices of foods to pick from while they are in our classrooms.

Tarpley, M. T. (2023, August 21). Healthy eating curriculum may contribute to eating disorders in kids. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023/08/21/curriculum-trigger-eating-disorder/

Environmental Wellness toolkit

zd968467_1 — 2024-04-23 23:38:24 UTC

This article on Environmental Wellness from the National Institutes of Health provides ways for people to improve their personal health and wellbeing. There are so many things we can do internally to improve our overall health and wellbeing but there are also many changes we can make to our environment and what's around us. For example, as it starts to get warmer out and the pollen increases in our enviorment, it's important to keep up with our allergy medicine and staying away from things we know attract pollen to keep our allergies under control. We can also take steps to keeping our bodies healthy overall with the weather changes. We should not stand outside for too long as we might start to experince heat exhaustion or other heat-related illnesses. To avoid this, we can wear a hat to protect our scalp, we can wear sunglasses to protect our eyes and wear sunscreen to protect our skin. Finally, we can also take note to the news when the temperature changes and what the air quality is like outdoors. If we know we are apart of a sensitive group, that should be our sign to stay indoors as long as we can until the air becomes more clear. This pertains to teaching health in the K-4 classroom because some of these things parents might be msising out on teaching their children this at home. Some kids just love being outside even when it's in the 90s with no sunscreen and they might not have parents to tell them it's time to come inside or even remind them to reapply sunscreen to avoid sun burns. In the classroom, teachers can try to do an experiment with an LED light and an object that can signify our skin and show how staying under the rays for too long can long-term damage our skin and can potentially lead to skin cancer. This could be a cool science experiment to try with students.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2024, January 4). Environmental wellness toolkit. National Institutes of Health. https://www.nih.gov/health-information/environmental-wellness-toolkit

Coping With Grief

zd968467_1 — 2024-04-23 23:48:45 UTC

This article Coping With Grief from News in Health shares ways to adapt when losing someone who is close to you. Everyone deals with grief in all different kinds of ways because everyone expresses their emotions differently; Whether they are happy or sad. The hardest thing to wrap your head around when it comes to grief is that it is the process of letting something go that you maybe never wanted to let go of ever. For some, it's in their best interest to keep themselves busy so that they do not get lost in their minds and wander into unhealthy places. This could look like surrounding themselves with loved ones, playing sports, going to the gym, cooking a new meal etc. For some, this could be seeing a therapist, crying, screaming, etc. What is most important when dealing with grief is taking care of yourself and recognizing what you need to do for you to be okay. There is life after loss and you will get through this tough time. Everything will be okay! This is a super important lesson for k-4 students to learn because they might experience this first hand with a grandparent or close friend. Young children do not know how to properly deal with their emotions so it's important for us teachers to support our students when they are going through a difficult time. I don't necessarily think this is something that should be talked about a lot in the classroom (I think there should be a small portion, of course) However, you never know what a student has gone through and I would never want to trigger any of my students. I think it's important to still touch on the topic in class and leave it at that. If students have any questions, I would leave that door open for them to ask.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2022, July 26). Coping with grief. National Institutes of Health. https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2017/10/coping-grief

Reported drug use among adolescents continued to hold below pre-pandemic levels in 2023

zd968467_1 — 2024-04-23 23:58:13 UTC

This article about how Reported drug use among adolescents continued to hold below pre-pandemic levels in 2023 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse shares that children as young as 8th grade are in possession of some type of drug or drink alcohol. It shares that even trying to push back adolescents to use any sort of drug by just one year, that can be a step in the right direction when trying to get users to decrease their use in the future. Using drugs or drinking alcohol is extremely dangerous for young children and we need to get drugs and alcohol out of the hands of young children. This can be incorporated into the classroom by doing the straw experiment. I think this has been a common experiment in the elementary schools to get students to understand what it feels like to breathe when you are a smoker. I think they have to run in place and then blow through a straw. The idea we want to get students to understand is that the more you smoke, the more damage you do to your lungs. It's become a lot harder to run, play and just breathe when you start smoking. This experiment should (if carried out appropriately) shy students away from beginning to use drugs or alcohol in general.

Reported drug use among adolescents continued to hold below pre-pandemic levels in 2023. National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2023, December 13). https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/2023/12/reported-drug-use-among-adolescents-continued-to-hold-below-pre-pandemic-levels-in-2023

Sesame Street launches TV show for children affected by Syrian civil war

zd968467_1 — 2024-04-24 00:58:27 UTC

This article Sesame Street launches TV show for children affected by Syrian civil war from PBS explains how Sesame Street has created some new characters that share all kinds of emotions and feelings to help children who were suffering from trauma during the Syrian civil war. These children have suffered a lot of trauma already and they deserve all of the love and support. These new episodes were created just for these children to explore different ways they can work on coping skills with their emotions. They also of course, offer in comic relief from time to time to add a smile onto these poor children's faces. This is another important topic for students to learn and teachers to teach in the K-4 classroom because we may not know what kind of trauma or experiences some of our students have experienced before stepping into our classrooms. It's important for teachers to teach how we can deal with our trauma and that our trauma does not define us or how we choose to live our lives. In the classroom, teachers can talk largely about all different kinds of emotions, not just the happy ones. Ones to include could be but not limited to: anger, fear, frustration, nervousness or loneliness. It's important to teach students that there are so many ways to express our feelings.

Kennedy, M. (2020, January 22). Sesame street launches TV show for children affected by Syrian Civil War. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/sesame-street-launches-tv-show-for-children-affected-by-syrian-civil-war

Water safety for children

zd968467_1 — 2024-04-24 01:20:26 UTC

This article Water safety for children from the Better Health Channel highlights different safety precautions for adults to take when your child is around water. To some, learning how to swim and support yourself is an essential skill that most parents want their child to learn. God forbid they go to the beach or a pool, the parents will feel secure knowing that their child can swim and keep their head above water safely rather than them having no idea how to do that. It's a good idea to start children with water and experience what it feels like to have water on their skin before going into a swimming pool or any body of water. Flotation devices are good to use as well as that will slowly foster their confidence to swim on their own. This topic could be addressed in the classroom when the temperature is warm or it's getting closer to summer and the teacher knows that their students will be going to a shore or pool for the summer. It is not our full responsibility to teach children how to swim but we should still educate them on water safety and practices when they get to a shore or pool. The teacher can share photos and ask what is a good decision or not a good decision. (Ex: Sally has not learned to swim yet. Should she put on her floaties or leave them on the side of the pool before jumping in?) Questions like this should get students thinking and could be exact thoughts of what some of them could think of when around a pool.

Department of Health & Human Services. (2002, May 13). Water Safety for Children. Better Health Channel. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/water-safety-for-children

How much physical activity do children need?

zd968467_1 — 2024-04-24 01:30:08 UTC

This article of How much physical activity do children need from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention recommend that children ages 3-5 need to be active throughout the day. Once they turn 6 up until they are 17, children are recommended to be active for at least 60 minutes every day. This activity could be literally anything from walking around the neighborhood, walking up and down the stairs or even a few pushups here and there. Anything to get children's blood moving is what we want! It's also important to recognize that there are age-appropriate activities for different age groups. 7 year olds should not be lifting weights just yet but kicking a ball around the backyard with neighborhood kids a perfect activity to engage in. Talking about being active and staying physically active to children is important to talk about with children because it's really to jeep them happy. Physical activity is good for everyone physically of course, but also emotionally and spiritually. When we take just 60 minutes out of our days to do something for us, we come out of it being in a better and happier place. In the classroom, teachers can utilize brain breaks and getting students up and out of their seats like just dance, a short children exercise video or just a dance party to get them up and moving.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, June 30). How much physical activity do children need?. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/children/index.htm