A practical health curriculum

Injury – face plant into the concrete floor on our way home (Photo credit: Lee Turner)

While I am the last person to want to add to teachers’ work load, I do think it is time to teach a real health curriculum, starting in kindergarten.  We are facing difficulties with our health system and it is likely to get worse.  I have been surprised by how little people understand about dealing with minor illnesses and injuries; as our aging population increases, we will have more patients with increasing health needs.  We can’t avoid the need for medical professionals to treat serious illnesses but we can learn to recognise what is serious and what isn’t and how to reduce the load on doctors and hospitals.  People need to understand how their bodies function, especially to keep them well.  They need to know how to support their body’s effort to keep them well and how to recognise the seriousness of an illness or injury and how to respond.   And they need to know how infants and the elderly differ in their health needs.

I have done some research and discovered that much of the curriculum could be covered not only in health classes, but some science and even (economic) geography.  It would require some reshaping of the curriculum but, for example, cells are how human beings are constructed, sometimes repaired, attacked by bacteria and viruses and healed.  A biology curriculum would have to go further than just teaching cells, but the teaching of how cells operate in bodies may actually help improve retention of cell biology.

Ontario’s grade 1 to 8 curriculum is primarily concerned with making healthy choices:

Health Curriculum Grades 1 to 8

Healthy Eating.

Personal Safety and Injury Prevention.

Substance Use, Addictions, and Related Behaviours.

Growth and Development

Integration of Mental Health

This is good, but not enough.  A more thoroughly developed curriculum would empower our future citizens in taking responsibility for their own health.

I live in a city where a lot of people bicycle.  I have noticed that very few cyclists realise that they come under the same laws and regulations as cars.  There are some allowances made for parking bikes and occasionally they are allowed (the permission is posted clearly) to enter a road blocked to cars.  There are many bike lanes.

English: Graph of adult cyclist head injuries versus helmet use in New Zealand. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Driving a car without lights and using a cellphone while driving are both illegal here.  Recently a young woman was hit by a car as she cycled on the wrong side of the road at night without lights and while texting.  The local media did say the driver of the car was not charged but they did not make it clear how many violations this woman was guilty of.  In addition, she was not wearing a helmet.  Helmets are mandatory here for children (not adults) but many children and adults wear them sitting improperly on their heads, on top of caps or not firmly secured.  A great waste of money.

Carelessness causes accidents… Accidents slow up production. – NARA – 535274 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was a kid, the police used to come to the school to talk to us about road safety – as pedestrians and cyclists.  While many of us might have ignored the advice, at least we knew that what we were doing was either dangerous or illegal.  That program no longer exists.  Fire departments have trailers designed to teach fire safety and public health nurses used to come to school to teach personal hygiene and how to use a toothbrush.  These programs not only made an impression but it broadened students’ horizons to recognise what some of the resources in their community were.

I realise that changes need to be made to the way our health care is delivered and medical professionals are taking steps to streamline care without making it less effective.  That is not my field, however.  What I am proposing is that we educate our citizenry in how to care for themselves and when they need to seek professional help.

Including mental health is perhaps not more than a gesture as treatment is

Rethink Mental Illness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

available only to those are seriously ill or who have enough money to pay for care.  Perhaps a country of people who understand mental illness, believe it can be treated and are aware of what mental illness costs in productivity are might decide that mental health also needs funding.

What I propose is a curriculum starting in grade one and largely delivered by the end of grade ten. My next post will give a detailed outline of the proposed health curriculum.

Related articles

• In ‘Peer’ We Trust (madinamerica.com)
• I Damaged My Children By Hiding My Mental Illness From Them (thegoodmotherproject.com)
• Misconceptions about mental health (mentalhealthstories.wordpress.com)
• Kathy Rohr: Myths about mental illness are harmful (lacrossetribune.com)
• Coping with Chronic Illness: Specialist Toby Dauber on Becoming Stronger and Living a Fulfilling Life (prweb.com)
• The Benefits Of Homeopathy Naturopathy Montreal (allabouthealthandfitnessblog.wordpress.com)
• How Do Physical and Psychological Health Co-Exist? (thenerdynurse.com)

Announcing a new blog: for Teaching Outside the Box

http://teachingideasoutsidethebox.wordpress.com/

The new blog is intended to be an adjunct to this one. While this blog is largely a commentary on education, the new blog will offer practical information. In a few months I will be retiring from formal teaching within a school board but I can’t stop spilling over with ideas for teaching. Rather than leave them to simmer, I will be posting them there. I will also post some of my favorite ideas from the past 25 to 30 years of teaching.

There will rarely be fully fledged lessons or units, nor will they be necessarily specific to a grade. I have adapted grade twelve units to be used in a grade eight class and seen those units adapted to use in a grade five class. Sometimes they will be a full lesson or a full unit or a cross subjects lesson. Whatever they are, I do ask you to give me credit on any written document.

Why won’t they be fully fledged? To be frank, I have never taken a lesson and done it just as it was written, even if I created it and used it satisfactorily the year before. There are always too many new factors such as new information, a crossover from another subject, the class’s interest, different time limits and I am sure you can add to that list. I also got bored doing the same thing twice in exactly the same way.

If you want help adapting or designing anything I post, especially if it is meant for gifted or other IPRC’d students, I would be happy to come and work with you if your school is within an easy distance of Ottawa or Toronto. I am also on Skype and on Skype, I can consult even if you are on the other side of the earth.

Ottawa Canada June 2010 — Nepean Point Views 2 (Photo credit: dugspr — Home for Good)

What can I help you with? I have taught every grade from two to eight (ages 8 to 13) and as a supply teacher, I taught everything. I have taught adults and I am a qualified teacher of English as a Second Language. I am a specialist in teaching children with special needs, especially gifted and learning disabled. I hold a masters in adaptive education. The best fun I have ever had in education, besides teaching itself, was having student teachers in my classrooms. I loved encouraging them to try new things and watching them grow in confidence.

So, if I can help, let me know.

Diane

Toronto Skyline (Photo credit: Bobolink)

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Two Animal Fables About Education: The Dangers of Metaphors!

There is a fable often told at teachers’ workshops and conferences, especially if the topic is exceptional children.  Exceptional is teacher speak for children who are either two deviations above or below the norm on an IQ test, students with learning disabilities or students with emotional or physical disabilities.

The Fable of the Animal School is told below.  It is a ridiculous fable for reasons I will explain afterwards.  Then I will tell an alternative fable.  Enjoy.

The Animal School: A Fable

by George Reavis

Once upon a time the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problems of a “new world” so they organized a school. They had adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming. In fact, better than his instructor. But he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming in order to practice running. This was kept up until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school so nobody worried about that, except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running but had a nervous breakdown because of so much makeup work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the treetop down. He also developed a “charlie horse” from overexertion and then got a C in climbing and D in running.

The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In the climbing class, he beat all the others to the top of the tree but insisted on using his own way to get there.

At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceeding well and also run, climb and fly a little had the highest average and was valedictorian.

The prairie dogs stayed out of school and fought the tax levy because the administration would not add digging and burrowing to the curriculum. They apprenticed their children to a badger and later joined the groundhogs and gophers to start a successful private school.

Does this fable have a moral?

 

The intention of George Reavis was undoubtedly to suggest that teachers should recognise student’s strengths and not push them in their areas of weaknesses beyond what they are capable of doing.

Unfortunately, by comparing animal to animal who have things they can do and things they cannot do at all, Reeves does a disservice to all but the most handicapped of students.  It suggests to many people that students should not be pushed at all in their areas of weakness.  I disagree with that.

Let me propose an alternate fable.

A Tale of Two Bunny Schools

Flossie and Saucy went to the same Bunny School.  Flossie was an amazing runner.  She won all the races at her school and sometimes the races against all the district schools.  She was weak at finding herbs and grasses and other good things to eat, especially when they were scarce but needed.

Her brother, Saucy, wasn’t much of a runner for a bunny, but he excelled at finding things to eat.  In fact, if it was good for a bunny to eat, Saucy would be sure to find it first.  Not only that, but Saucy could sniff a poisonous plant out before anyone got close enough to want to eat it.

Their teacher had read Reeves’ fable and applied the moral she thought she had learned.  Flossie was coached to greater heights, jumping and running.  Although she did take gathering lessons, she was not pushed to do better.  Sometimes her mark was bumped up … just a little.

Saucy, on the other hand, not only excelled at gathering, but was gaining his own little following on Twitter.  His followers were looking for tips on his success but Saucy really didn’t have any; he was just good.  Of course, running was the worst part of his day.  He would see Flossie bounding away and get discouraged.  To improve his self esteem, he was praised for any slight improvement and got marks that were almost as good as Flossie’s.

They graduated with good marks and went out into the world.  One day Saucy was out nibbling on herbs when a fox spotted him and gave chase.  Saucy bolted for his burrow but the fox easily caught up with him and Saucy was dinner.

Flossie missed him and his knowledge about where to eat.  Over a period of time, Flossie became malnourished because she couldn’t find the right foods for her athletic body.  One day as she was grazing, the same fox spotted her.  Saucy had been so delicious that the fox was thrilled to see another yummy bunny.  Flossie bolted for the burrow but her body was no longer strong enough to sustain the speed she needed.  The fox, on the other hand, had been well nourished by eating Saucy and soon caught her.  Too bad she was mainly skin and bones.

The Cousins’ Bunny School

 Meanwhile a few fields over, Peter and Juanita, the cousins of Flossie and Saucy, went to another school.  Peter, like Flossie, was a good runner and not good at gathering.  Juanita shared Saucy’s skill set: a great finder of food, but slow moving for a bunny.

Their teacher had a different philosophy.  Perhaps she had never read the fable.  She recognized that people have different talents and weaknesses but she believed that every adult needed certain knowledge and skills.  Before she planned her teaching, she asked herself the purpose of the curriculum.  The answer was that running was to escape predators and  gathering was to keep the body nourished to stay healthy and eventually reproduce.

She encouraged Juanita’s talents in gathering and tried to find ways of enriching and challenging her.  At the same time, she insisted that Juanita practice running and jumping daily.  She taught her effective ruses such as dodging, quick turns, finding thick thickets to hide in, staying very still and assessing the situation.  While Juanita would never run as fast as her brother, she became competent and knew ways to compensate for less speed.

Peter received similar instruction in running to Juanita, but because he had a talent for it, he improved faster.  His teacher insisted that he learn what foods he needed to keep his body healthy and where he could find them.  Sometimes he got extra help from Juanita until he knew where to find food in their area.  He was never as good as Juanita, but he could feed himself.

They graduated.  Juanita had become competent enough as an athlete to enjoy games with her brother, especially if she could use tactics as well as running.  Peter enjoyed going on food hunts with her.  He was pleased on the rare occasion when he found an herb that she had missed.  Occasionally predators spotted them but they always escaped.  The predators gave up in the end and went over a few fields were they had heard the bunnies were easier to catch.

One day, Juanita and Peter were saddened to hear that their cousins had been eaten.  They were distracted from their sorrow, however, by bunnies who had heard of their skills and were visiting to assess them (favorably) as potential mates.

Struggling to Read with Comprehension

There are two kinds of people who decide to enter the teaching profession: those who were good at the game of school and those who weren’t.  Those who weren’t nurse a hope that one day they might make a difference to someone else who isn’t good at the game.

I was mainly the latter although I was pegged as someone who Could Do Better if only I worked/did my homework/ was motivated/ wasn’t so lazy.  I was very good at reading so as a teacher and even though I knew better, I never really got the concept that a child could read words with some fluency and yet haven’t a clue what they had just read.  Never, that is, until I started studying Chinese in September.

I am a motivated student, prepared to work hard.  Most days I spend between three-quarters of an hour and an hour and a half studying, using every tool that comes to hand in addition to doing the assigned homework.  I wasn’t able to start the course until a couple of weeks into it and it was another four weeks before the textbook and workbook were available.  I used Internet sites and my notes to study for the first couple of quizzes.  My wrists and thumbs hurt from writing characters in pencil on paper and on the pad on my computer.  I remember why written work was such hell for me in school.

My average is probably an A- or B+ in spite of those difficulties and I would be proud of myself except that I rarely understand the professor when she speaks to us in Chinese. I stumble over the simplest replies. I read sentences with the halting lack of expression of a very early reader and worst of all even if I had recognised every character with ease, I still wouldn’t have a clue what I had read.

In short I am that reader I didn’t understand: the one who can read the words without understanding the sentence.  I am beginning to understand how they can get by for so long and even do well in school!

For a start, textbooks and readers today are packed with full colour pictures, diagrams, maps, charts and other supplementary information about the topic at hand.  The non-reader can garner a lot of information from the visual aids on the page.  In fact, students are encouraged to do just that as part of their reading strategies; the illustrations provide a legitimate means of giving readers information about the topic and a chance to anticipate where the text is going.  The non-reader will rely heavily on the information, not just use it a supplement to the reading material.

Secondly, students are often tipped off by the phrasing of a question as to what answer is expected.   “Do you think Goldilocks should have gone into the cottage?” is a fairly clear indication that the questioner thinks not.  It is not easy to create a question to elicit answers that will indicate how well a student understood the story; that is an art in itself.  I have often spent time before class jotting down ideas for effective questions or rephrasing the ones I had.

These readers in difficulty are unlikely to volunteer answers unless they are sure their answer is correct.  While you don’t want to embarrass them, you do want to know how good their comprehension is and you do want to engage them in discussion.  A teacher who intermittently chooses volunteers and those sitting on their hands to answer will prepare all the students for being called on when they aren’t sure.  This will be especially true if the pattern is random so students will not be able to predict who is next. Following up an error with tactful questions to the student or the class as a whole can be the beginning of using mistakes as a learning experience.  Comments more widely directed such as “that’s a different way of looking at it.  How would you support this argument?” can help the class as a whole consider less conventional ideas instead of embarrassing the student who didn’t understand the work.

“Interesting thought, Jenny.  Can you tell us what made you think of that?” will work once the student is confident enough to think on her feet.  This gives her a chance to refer to the text (struggling readers don’t miss everything) or bring in other experiences or texts, strategies encouraged in all readers.

If the struggling reader avoids participating in discussions of stories and other texts, she has many ways of faking it on paper.  Many adults have told me that they just listened to class discussions and used the information as a basis for answering questions.  If the teacher uses multiple choice or fill in the blank type exercises, then the work has just got easier.  Usually a child who is paying attention can figure out which choices or words are the best candidates for right answer.  Then he makes a guess.  If there are, as usual, four choices and the student guesses wildly, he has a 25% chance of getting the answer right.  If he correctly narrows the answer down to three or two choices and then guesses, he improves his odds to 33% or 50%.  If he actually figures out a right answer or two, he may pass.

This all assumes he does not cheat or receive a little help from his friends.  It also assumes that he does not employ bafflegab in writing answers.  This is the fine art of confusing the reader with such convoluted language or grammar and oversized words that it is unclear what the writer intended to say.  A good dose of if-it-doesn’t-make-sense-then-the-answer-is-automatically-wrong usually cures it.  However most teachers do give the student the benefit of the doubt a time or two before lowering the boom.

In other words, the struggling reader can often do a good job of faking it, especially if he is reasonably bright.  When he declines to read in front of the class or stumbles on his words he will allow the world to assume that he is just shy.  He will announce that he hates reading and then no one will know for sure unless they explore in depth.

Why won’t the teacher be concerned?  If the child is generally well behaved, is scraping through in reading and passing in the other parts of Language Arts and the other subjects, that’s good enough.  Many teachers have the attitude that reading is not part of other subjects so don’t support weak students with new vocabulary or more sophisticated grammar in subjects like history or science.  They may believe that they need to accommodate the child in learning the material, not in means of learning the material.  What they forget is that reading and writing are fundamental to academic success.              The language and thought of each subject needs to be learned along with the subject matter itself.

In addition, the teacher will have a handful of students who are working below grade level and others who have been identified as needing support.  The teacher will have her hands full doing the paperwork for those students and planning for them as well as the normal workload for her class.  A brief interview with the parents of the struggling reader and a suggestion that they read with her at home may be all she has time for.  She could suggest educational and psychological testing but she knows that the child will be low on the list and children with more serious needs will regularly be popped in ahead of their student.  In the end the child would be placed in a regular classroom with support, where she is now.

A child whose timed reading comprehension is in the 7^th percentile will not get help, in fact, no one will suggest testing if she has a C average (high level 2).  Most teachers will not even suspect that she is anything more than lazy or dislikes reading

So what are the struggling reader and I to do?  I know what I will do.  Classes have finished and I have my final exam on Saturday, December 18 from 7 p. m. to 10:00 p. m.  I am going to start by spending a chunk of my studying time listening to a pod cast teaching oral Chinese and practising saying the sentences I hear.  I will still spend time every day practising writing characters and listening to sounds and writing the characters, pinyin and tones I am hearing.  With luck and hard work, by the 18^th I will be able to read a simple sentence of Chinese characters and understand the meaning at the same time.  If it gives me insights into how to help the struggling reader, I will let you know.

Interesting or Useful Books for Educators or Parents

These are a few of my favourites and I expect to add to them from time to time.  Please let me know if you have come across particularly useful books or web sites in your travels.  I would be happy to check them out and add them to these lists.

“Could Do Better”: Why Children Underachieve and What to Do About It by Harvey P. Mandel and Sander I. Marcus (Hardcover – Sep 8 1995)

We look at our underachieving students and write them off as lazy – or wonder if there is any way we can help.  Mandel and Marcus reinforced my sneaking suspicion that there is no such thing as a lazy child.  Well worth reading for parents and teachers alike.

Being Smart about Gifted Education: A Guidebook for Educators and Parents by Dona J. Matthews and Joanne F. Foster (Paperback – Aug 2009)

An excellent guidebook.

Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom: Strategies and Techniques Every Teacher Can Use to Meet the Academic Needs of the Gifted and Talented by Susan Winebrenner and Sylvia B. Rimm (Paperback – Nov 1 2002)

I have used the two Winebrenner books on this list and found them so useful, I would be inclined to try any of her other books.  We hear about compacting the curriculum for gifted kids; she shows us how to do it with a minimum of work and maximum impact.

Teaching Kids with Learning Difficulties in the Regular Classroom: Strategies and Techniques Every Teacher Can Use to Challenge and Motivate Struggling Students by Susan Winebrenner (Paperback – Nov 1 2002)

The Pampered Child Syndrome: How to Recognize It, How to Manage It, and How to Avoid It by Maggie Mamen (Paperback – Oct 5 2004)

Highly recommended for both parents and teachers.  Parents sometimes worry or are even fairly sure that they are indulging their children a bit much.  This book explains the consequences and what to do.  It is also useful for teachers who receive pampered children in their classrooms.

Mismeasure Of Man by Stephen Gould (Hardcover – Jun 26 1996)

An fascinating account of the origins of IQ tests.  Worth the read but you will never take an IQ test too seriously again!

Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf

An excellent book about reading and the process of reading from a potted history to a careful explanation of the neurology of the reading brain and the dyslexic brain.  You will never look at dyslexics the same again.

Unless you have a good understanding of the construction of the brain, you may need to slow down, study the diagrams and find an app that shows a 3D model of the brain.  It took me a while to get through the last chapters with reasonable comprehension and I will probably go back to them again.