Bulletin board by Jack Mayhew

Mental and Emotional Health

jackrmayhew — 2024-01-17 01:22:31 UTC

Reading this article on USA Today, it goes into how Covid came with a bunch of setbacks for students. This included not only academic growth, but also mental and emotional growth. Students are now seeing a positive increase in mental health since returning to school. This can be due to the lack of face-to-face social interaction during the lockdown. Benefits of teachers teaching healthy habits and support tactics for mental and emotional health are a must in today's classrooms. Society has developed in many ways, and with this higher level expectations of academic success and technological improvements; society is at an all time high pertaining to stress. To keep up with societies changes, education needs to adapt as well and teaching the common cores is not enough to prepare students for the "real world".

Citation:

COVID set students back, but there’s good news on mental health as new school year starts. (2023, August 19). USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/08/16/school-improves-kids-mental-health-need-classroom-support/70589677007/

Healthy Eating

jackrmayhew — 2024-01-17 01:22:38 UTC

Reading this article on CNN health, it talks about the struggles of teaching healthy eating within the classroom. I think that mentioning, "'healthy eating' curriculum can do more harm than good" isn't the right attitude. However, I do like that this article mentions a lot of the issues that teachers may not think about when teaching this subject. Health class is definitely an area where teachers need to be on higher alert with their diction; students at a young age don't have the wisdom learned from time and may take someone's word at face value. That being said, "healthy eating" can be thrown out of proportion through extreme means in order to achieve a certain "physical appearance". These stipulations need to be considered when teaching the topic and maybe support strategies should be given to students that are experiencing the negative sides of this topic. All in all, the main goal of the topic is to achieve a longer and healthier life by starting good habits at a young age.

Citation:

Hanson, O. (2023, October 9). “Healthy eating” curriculum can do more harm than good. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/09/health/unhealthy-school-nutrition-lessons-wellness/index.html

Physical Activity

jackrmayhew — 2024-01-17 01:22:47 UTC

Reading this article on nea-today, I learned the positive impact physical activity has on students academic careers. The positive come from not only physical health, but students happiness, confidence, and mental well-being. Even at the youngest ages of education, students need physical activity to build certain motor functions. As we age, we need this activity to keep certain functions and improve our overall physical health. An additional benefit to this is the ability to get higher quality of sleep after physical activity. Good sleep leads to higher focus and performance while also maintaining mental health. Teaching physical education is and will always be an essential in education.

Citation:

Fitzgerald, S. (2023, August 28). How PE Boosts Student Mental Health | NEA. Www.nea.org. https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/how-pe-boosts-student-mental-health

Safety & Preventing Unintentional Injury

jackrmayhew — 2024-01-17 01:23:35 UTC

While reading on the National Library of Medicine('s) site, I found an article that had statistics on the success of different safety prevention actions. These preventions varied for a wide set of concerns, between emotional health and dating violence to bullying and gang violence. This site has data on all of the topics and more. Teaching preventions that we find the most effective can be a great way to support the larger portion of the student body. However, if the funding and time exists, I believe in teaching multiple methods because every student and person learns differently. Some methods may work for some and other methods may work for others. Therefore, I believe the best safety prevention is a wide-net approach to teaching.

Citation:

Miller, G. F., Wilson, L., Rice, K., DePadilla, L., Mercado‐Crespo, M., & Jones, S. E. (2022). Injury Prevention Activities in US Schools, School Health Policies and Practices Survey 2014. Journal of School Health. https://doi.org/10.1111/josh.13190

Personal Health & Wellness

jackrmayhew — 2024-01-17 01:23:45 UTC

Reading an article by MUSC.edu, I learned how the active wellness efforts of schools help lower average BMI for students. In today's day and age, students are spending more and more of their free-time on games or tv. Technology advances and post-covid(lockdown) have limited the amount of physical activity within our youth. Schools taking the initiative in making up for this lost physical activity can help with mental health, and overall personal health of students.

Citation:

School-based wellness initiative shown to reduce average student BMI. (n.d.). Web.musc.edu. Retrieved January 19, 2024, from https://web.musc.edu/about/news-center/2023/02/28/reducing-student-bmi

Intentional Injury & Violence

jackrmayhew — 2024-01-17 01:23:56 UTC

While reading through CDC's blog, the topic of intentional injury and workplace violence for school teachers has raised some alarms for the career. When thinking about violence in schools, many think about student to student violence; however, student to teacher violence is another big concern that is sometimes overlooked. Having lessons on these topics for students and lessons for teachers can help benefit all parties. Support can be given to those that need outlets before having an incident. Also, post-incident actions are most important as the violence is occurring. Making sure teachers and students know how to handle the situation can save further injuries.

Citations:

says, W. (2023, August 10). Safety for Workers in Elementary and Secondary Schools | Blogs | CDC. https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2023/08/10/safety-for-school-workers/

Death/Grief/Loss

jackrmayhew — 2024-01-17 01:24:20 UTC

Reading this article on Education Week, I noticed that New Jersey recognizes the growing crisis of grief within students. At a young age when you are afflicted with loss of a parent, relative, friend, etc. Children may not understand how to cope with this. Schools in New Jersey are now being required to teach lessons on grief in order to assist students with these emotional tolls. The benefits of teaching younger audiences how to handle grief can help them learn "healthy support behaviors" and use these tools for the rest of their lives'.

Citation:

Blad, E. (2024, January 12). Teaching About Grief and Loss: One State’s New Requirement for Schools. Education Week. https://padlet.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.edweek.org%2Fleadership%2Fteaching-about-grief-and-loss-one-states-new-requirement-for-schools%2F2024%2F01

Trauma

jackrmayhew — 2024-01-17 01:24:33 UTC

While reading Insight-into-Diversity, I found an article that talks about trauma support within schools. Education is always developing and improving as our society changes. With the recent pandemic, a lot of our core teaching principles are being looked into, and education as a whole is expanding to cover more than just the general education topics. Teachers and staff are expected to develop students on more than just academics and with that we hope to create positive life changes for our students. The improvements of adding more to health curriculum like trauma support and mental health can allow us to further our students academic growth in a positive manner. Topics that used to be left to either families or for students to figure out themselves are now being brought into the classroom.

Citation:

Stewart, M. (2022, March 16). Trauma-Informed Education Becomes Popular Response to Stress of COVID-19, Racial Strife, and More. INSIGHT into Diversity. https://www.insightintodiversity.com/trauma-informed-education-becomes-popular-response-to-stress-of-covid-19-racial-strife-and-more/