(From the ISHN Member information service) The Healthy Schools program in British Columbia, Canada is among the Canadian and international leaders in school-based and school-linked prevention of specific health problems and in promoting overall health.  A visit to their content rich web site will reveal that the schools program is part of an overall settings-based approach and a "whole of government" strategy called Act Now BC. The province provides funding for a number of excellent initiatives and activities, all of which have used a long-term, systems-based strategy.  Multi-intervention approaches are used regularly as the basis for strategies on physical activity, healthy eating, addictions and mental health. The province has mandatory health/personal planning as well as physical education curricula from kindergarten to senior high school grades. The province funds a network of over 150 schools per year as innovators and leaders in school prevention and promotion. Regular conferences bring the school health community together. Excellent learning resources are identified and promoted. The Healthy Schools program has funded the development of a number of generic school health resources that encourage good planning school self-assessments, the use of multiple interventions, effective teaching and student assessment practices and more. Indeed, the province has been both a pioneer and a leader.
However, like all other jurisdictions, British Columbia struggles to truly maintain a focus on improving the overall health of the school environment (policies, practices, social interactions, physical conditions, family problems and strengths, relationship with the community etc) rather than being fixated on a selected set of health or social behaviours or conditions. The list of priority topics on the BC education ministry web page for its healthy schools program is typical of most jurisdictions; healthy eating, physical activity, tobacco/drugs. If one reads the list of "generic" school health planning guides and tools from BC (and most other jurisdictions) one will find that the generic principles and practices are almost entirely focused on or applied to only these health problems or behaviours. We will struggle to find references to to child abuse, sexual health, poverty, indigenous students, LGBT students, violence, crime and many other issues confronting youth and families today in those planning documents. The BC Healthy Schools web site does maintain a list of educational and other resources addressing a broader list of issues. And it does list its 150+ school success stories according to this broader list of topics. But, again, if we examine these stories, we find almost no examples of schools trying to build their overall capacity to implement and maintain school health promotion programs (3/159) but we do find an overwhelming number of stories on healthy eating and physical activity. We also find very few stories from schools addressing topics like substance abuse, child abuse and other more difficult social issues.   
If we turn our attention to the current dominant thinking in the health sector these days, we will find out why so many of the "healthy schools" programs have actually become "school prevention" programs rather than "school health promotion" programs. As funding has been leeched from the health sector overall, we find that health authorities have retreated back to their protection and prevention functions and away from their health promotion function. The work done by health professionals in schools simply reflects this larger trend. Indeed, if one were to examine health ministries around the world and even the WHO, we would find that they are structured, staffed and funded more favourably around "non-communicable diseases" than around "health promotion".   
The danger in this trend to reduce the focus and fixate on a selected number of health issues means that the healthy schools programs become vulnerable when a new issue such as cyber-bullying emerges to capture the attention of the public, parents and decision-makers. Resources are quickly devoted to this new problem and if the healthy schools movement is not ready to address it, they will be by=passed. Or, if other multi-intervention approaches/programs such as safe schools or community schools are available and compete with each other for such new resources, then we will soon see new infrastructure, new documents, new research, new leaders emerge, often repeating or over-lapping with work that has already been done. We will also see educators and school systems having to yet again adjust to a new set of requests and demands from a new set of stakeholders, often without aligning with existing initiatives. This is what happened in BC and several other Canadian and western countries. New laws, new coordinators, new professional development  activities and much more, all focused on bullying, cyber-bullying and to a lesser extent on LGBT students have been brought into BC (and other jurisdictions) in separate strategies
If the healthy schools movement and its related government, agency and school level programs do not move towards a school health promotion rather than prevention approach, it may very well find itself bypassed by new initiatives focused on the topt topic of the day rather than a long term developmental, systems-based approach. This is not to say that the HS movement should try to compete with such specific emerging concerns. Indeed, that is the way the health system has always been funded, by disease, rather than health. But the proponents of healthy schools need to always include all of the many aspects of health, wellness, development and its connection to learning in its mandate, maintaining links with the advocates, experts and practitioners focused on these 25+ issues and concerns and being ready to work with them as attention is turned to their issue. 
This is also not to say that the healthy schools movement should try to be the primary or over-arching paradigm for addressing many of these issues. Instead, the healthy schools movement, linked most effectively to the health sector,  and programs should be ready and willing to work with the many other multi-intervention approaches that work with other systems and sectors. These include the safe schools movement working with law enforcement, community schools working with social services and community development sectors, social/emotional learning and PBS models grounded in the school systems, the relief aid/emergencies in education movement working in countries facing disasters/conflict, school health & nutrition programs working in low income countries and many others. 
But if the healthy schools movement focuses too much on prevention and too little on promotion, it will not be able to either meet its mandate in addressing all aspects of health nor will it be able work effectively to work with other movements/sectoes in addressing the needs of the whole child.                      

(From the ISHN Member information service)  In the ASCD-ISHN global discussion of the need to better integrate health and social programs within education systems, it has been strongly suggested that authorities take a holisitc, whole child approach to education rather than trying to carve up children into specific health/social behaviours or conditions to to compete with the academic purposes of schooling. With the October 2013 release of its Education Renewal and Innovation Framework: Directions for Change, the Government of the Northwest Territories in Canada illustrates how this can be done from the ground up, while using a distinctly indigenous and rural set of values and principles. The news release announcing the framework identifies several challenges that require changes in the schools, the nature of which illustrate how the new directions see school as part of their respective social and economic contexts and communities. "The framework is one of several initiatives developed by the Government of the Northwest Territories to address challenges like poverty, mental health, addictions, early childhood development, safety, the legacy of residential schools and school attendance.  Other challenges within the school system, like authentic learning, staff recruitment, training and retention and transitions to work or learning after high school will be met primarily through school programming and policies themselves, preparing children for a prosperous and healthy future." The foundations of the reforms are equally holistic in their approach to education. The executive summary of the document says it this way: "Thinking around teaching and learning is undergoing a major shift world-wide. The current education system is a model off a system similar to the factories of the Industrial Age. Subject areas are separated, students are sorted by age, and the end goal is a very specific set of skills and knowledge. Research now points to a more ecological understanding of the needs of learners and the factors that benefit learning."  These foundational statements are intended to guide the initiative. These statements, especially the first few, are born of indigenous worldviews and experiences where relationships with the land, ecology, and identity are very powerful.     

1. Relationships: Meaningful relationships with self, others, ideas, and the land are the foundation for all learning. 
   
2. Ecological Understanding: Education in the NWT is a living system of connections, each affecting an individual’s relationships and well-being. 
   
3. Identity: A positive sense of identity is actively supported. 
   
4. Development of Self: Each person has multiple needs that must be met in order to grow and become a capable, contributing person. 
   
5. Learning Together: People construct knowledge and learn individually and together. 
   
6. Diversity: Diversity is recognized and valued in the education system. 
   
7. Strengths and Growth: The ongoing growth of learners is nurtured. 
   
8. Competencies: The development of competencies is supported in all learners
   

The proposed directions for change reflect the holistic understanding and the set of coherent values. They include commitments on the part of government to  (1) "ensure that the school and community work together to build and renew positive 
relationships", (2) "e that student wellness and the development of a positive sense of identity are promoted and embedded in school experiences, programming, and environments", (3)  "ensure that educators have access to experiences and resources that enhance their wellness in order for them to focus on excellence in teaching" (5) "that the strengths and realities of small communities are recognized and built upon in order to ensure equitable, quality education in all NWT communities" and (9) "work with Aboriginal governments to be successful as they draw down jurisdiction over the education of their people".
The document does include other directions that will be more familiar to those working in school systems based on competition, traditional rote style learning and even narrow, behavioural modification approaches to promote health. These include research-based curriculum, better data and use of those data in decision-making, and more monitoring/reporting to provide better accountability. However, these traditional, more industrial approaches to education are firmly based and and linked within this indigenous, holistic, whole child approach, that in turn, is rooted in a deep understanding the indigenous and rural, northern communities served by the schools in this system.  To read more about the NWT education renewal, start at this web page.   

(From the ISHN Member information service)  One of the major challenges in sustaining and integrating health and social programs within education systems is the tendency in government to create and maintain "silos" of programs, often delivered in isolation or even competition with each other. Most governments create committees to encourage coordination but they often fail, or they focus on only one problem at a time. The Manitoba Healthy Child Agency, a strategy established in law in 2007, is an exception to this rule. The slogan on Manitoba license plates tells the world about "Friendly Manitoba". More than just words, this slogan actually reflects a culture and customs in the province, one which was born in Canada's harshest winters and bred by generations of immigrants who had to rely on each other. So, perhaps, it is this culture of cooperation that enables Healthy Child Manitoba (HCM) to be as effective as an inter-ministry agency, coordinating several ministers and ministries, in a "whole of government" strategy.  Other factors could include their requirement to report results every five years, its research, innovation and knowledge development capacity, and its combination of programs (as opposed to framework documents) that are delivered hands-on and delegated ways. As well, the Healthy Child inter-ministry program has its own legislation, entitled the Healthy Child Manitoba Act, thereby giving its coordination work legal authority and requirements to report every five years on progress.     

The HCM web site describes its work as follows: " in 2000, the provincial government implemented the Healthy Child Manitoba (HCM) Strategy – a network of programs and supports for children, youth and families. This nationally recognized strategy was set in legislation under The Healthy Child Manitoba Act in 2007.Led by the Healthy Child Committee of Cabinet, Healthy Child Manitoba bridges departments and governments and, together with the community, works to improve the well-being of Manitoba's children and youth. HCM focuses on child-centred public policy through the integration of financial and community-based family supports.In addition to these cross-sectoral government structures, The HCM Act also continues the work of cross-sectoral community structures, including Parent-Child Coalitions and the Provincial Healthy Child Advisory Committee (PHCAC). HCM researches best practices and models and adapts these to Manitoba's unique situation. It strengthens provincial policies and programs for healthy child and adolescent development, from the prenatal period to adulthood. HCM then evaluates programs and services to find the most effective ways to achieve the best possible outcomes for Manitoba children, families, and communities."

(From the ISHN Member information service)  A recent article describing a growing trend in the United states to voluntarily delay entry into high school in order to strengthen students academically and socially reflects increased attention to various transition periods in a child's schooling. A report on grade retention done by UNESCO is primarily focused on involuntary cases but does include some students who have volunteered to wait a year. That UNESCO report concludes that    “Grade repetition represents inefficiency and wastage of resources for society, but its voluntary forms may be beneficial to students in certain circumstances,”. In Ireland, a voluntary "transition" year has become so popular that the vast majority of students now make the choice to wait a year before proceeding. See our previous blof post on the Irish program here. In both of these cases and others, it may very well come down to the supports that are available to students as they make the transition. this is where effective, comprehensive health and social programs that are linked effectively within the school systems can be of the greatest service. Read more from the American news story.    

(Identified by ASCD SmartBrief)  A blog post identified by the ASCD Smart Brief service and published by Edutopia suggests that students should be taught to prepare their curricula vitae (which include personal and professional goals) rather then a simple resume (which simply lists assignments and accomplishments). This strategy for Career Education and Student Planning, one which the author calls preparing a "course for life", fits very well with health/personal/social development education, where effective teachers often use student journals and other reflection activities to help students learn more about themselves and their surroundings. As well, linking CV preparation with health journals and reflections is another way to achieve a better integration of health concerns within the core concerns of education systems. The author of the blog post discuses how difficult it can be for students to learn self-reflection techniques. But we all know that this process is essential if students are to develop personal behavioural and life plans. The article then outlines a five phases of preparing a CV, all of which are applicable to HPSD education as well as career education. Read more>> 

(From the ISHN Member information service) The news release describing the new Ontario Government vision for education, Achieving Excellence includes well-being as one of the three sub-headings for the release. The release itself includes these two points among the four used to provide examples of how the new educational policy will be implemented:

• Working with education and health partners to improve and expand health services for students and families
  
• Working with partners inside and outside of school to encourage students to be physically active and practise healthy lifestyles
  

The web page introducing the Ontario policy document states that Ontario's renewed and inter-connected goals for education are:

• Achieving Excellence: Children and students of all ages will achieve high levels of academic performance, acquire valuable skills and demonstrate good citizenship. Educators will be supported in learning continuously and will be recognized as among the best in the world.
  
• Ensuring Equity: All children and students will be inspired to reach their full potential, with access to rich learning experiences that begin at birth and continue into adulthood.
  
• Promoting Well-Being: All children and students will develop enhanced mental and physical health, a positive sense of self and belonging, and the skills to make positive choices.
  
• Enhancing Public Confidence: Ontarians will continue to have confidence in a publicly funded education system that helps develop new generations of confident, capable and caring citizens.
  

The political party that governed Ontario at the time this policy paper was published (April 2014) has recently been elected, so this emphasis on equity and wellness as part of the planned education goals would appear to have a good chance at implementation. the education ministry also released documents linking this policy paper Achieving Excellence to various health issues and directions being taken in the Ontario Healthy Schools Program. Read more from the news release

(From the UCLA School Mental Health Project)  A part of the ASCD-ISHN global dialogue on integrating health & social programs more effectively within education systems has focused on the need for better coordinated among the various student support services. A recent UCLA planning guide takes this coordination a major step forward and connects it to student learning and success. The guide suggests that "New directions for student and learning supports are key to systemically addressing barriers to learning and teaching. The aim is to unify and then develop a comprehensive and equitable system of student/learning supports at every school.This guide incorporates years of research and prototype development and a variety of examples from trailblazing efforts at local, district, regional, and state levels. The prototypes and examples can be adopted/adapted to design and plan ways to transform the role schools play." 

The UCLA analysis of the causes of this fragmentation is revealing. They suggest that "  While the range of student and learning supports at schools varies; some have few, some have many. In some instances, community services (e.g.,health and social services, after-school programs) are connected to a school. However, given their sparsity, agencies endeavoring to bring community services to schools usually must limit their activities to enhancing supports at a couple of school campuses in a neighborhood. Moreover, there often is not a good connection between community services and the work of the many school and district-based student support staff whose roles include preventing, intervening early, and treating students with learning, behavior, and emotional problems. Such school employed personnel include psychologists, counselors, social workers, nurses, dropout/graduation support staff, special educators, and others. When school and community efforts are poorly connected, community and school personnel tend to work
with the same students and families with little shared planning or ongoing communication. Ironically, some education policy makers have developed the false impression that community resources are ready and able to meet all the support needs of students and their families. This impression already has contributed to serious cuts related to student supports (e.g ., districts laying off student support personnel) in the struggle to balance tight school budgets.An outgrowth of all this has been increased fragmentation, as well ascounterproductive competition for sparse resources related to student and learning supports. Underlying the fragmentation is a fundamental policy problem. That problem is the long-standing and continuing marginalization in school improvement policy and practice of most efforts to directly use student and learning supports to address barriers to learning and teaching and re-engage disconnected students. "

The UCLA research and planning guide calls for a transformative change student support services that is based on these four principles:
1) Expand the policy framework for school improvement to fully integrate, as primary and essential, a component that brings together the supports for addressing barriers to learning and teaching and re-engaging disconnected students.
(2) Reframe student and learning support interventions to create a unified and comprehensive system of learning supports in classrooms and school-wide.
(3) Rework the operational infrastructure to ensure effective daily implementation and ongoing development of a unified and comprehensive system for addressing barriers to learning and teaching.
(4) Enhance approaches for systemic change in ways that ensure effective implementation, replication toscale, and sustainability

Read more>>

(From the ISHN Member information service)   The recent international conference on physical activity in Toronto in May 2014 had several national surveys reporting sub-standard levels of physical activity in children. Walking and biking to school is potentially the best way to increase school-related PA but studies also shpw that parents are reluctant to allow their children to walk/bike to school or to play outside after school in unsupervised activities. A blog post from an unlikely source (The Microsoft Mobility Lab) helps us to understand how underlying social factors are driving parent concerns and decisions. The Communications Director for the Microsoft Lab asks the question: " Are Fearful, Lurking Parents a Reason for Uninspired Transportation Choice?  He quotes from a book on the social lives of networked teens and points out that this parental concern is larger than just the trip to school. Parents are also reluctant to allow their children to go online, ride public transit, or even have much unstructured free time. The article notes how little time is now available for young people to mix socially without monitoring from their parents. He concludes that "  We have to remember that when you’re younger, you always want to be older. Kids see adults in places like bars, clubs, restaurants, and even public transit where they are not allowed. Somehow within that mix, we, as a society, have to do a better job of helping our children go through the coming-of-age process in ways that will create the local and global communities for them that we once had as kids ourselves." Read more>>  

(From the ISHN Member information service)     An article in Issue #3, 2014 of Health Promotion Practice illustrates the challenges of working in loosely-coupled education and health systems. This Canadian study examined policy documents on school nutrition and education in Canada at the federal, provincial and regional or local authority levels. The researchers note that "Results reveal distinct differences across federal, provincial, and regional levels. The availability of nutritious food in schools and having nutrition education as part of the curriculum were key components of the physical environment across federal and provincial levels. Federal and provincial priorities are guided by a health promotion framework and adopting a partnership approach to policy implementation. Gaps in regional-level policy include incorporating nutrition education in the curriculum and making the link between nutrition and obesity."  Read more>>

(From the ISHN Member information service)  An article in the May 2014 issue of the Journal of School Health reports on the factors that contribute to program sustainability in a school after a research project (with additional funding for the school) is completed. The researchers report that " This study examined the sustainability of New Moves, a school-based program aimed at decreasing weight-related problems in adolescent girls. Ten schools participated in the sustainability study. Teachers completed a survey and interview, and research staff observed 1 physical education (PE) class within 2 years of the study's completion. All schools continued all-girls PE classes using New Moves components following the study period. Fewer schools continued the nutrition and social support classroom modules and individual coaching sessions while no schools continued lunch get-togethers. Program components were sustained in both New Moves intervention schools and control schools. Programs are most likely to be sustained if they (1) fit into the current school structure, (2) receive buy-in by teachers, and (3) require minimal additional funds or staff time. Providing control schools with minimal training and intervention resources was sufficient to continue program components if staff perceived the program was important. Read more>>

(From the ISHN Member information service) ISHN and ASCD have been sponsoring an international dialogue on how health 7 social programs can be integrated within education systems. One aspect of that suggests that H&S advocates should support a broad, liberal and student-centered approach to learning as outlined in the ASCD Whole Child approach. However, should we also be asking H&S advocates if they are actually doing that in their various instructional programs that seek to teach specific knowledge and skills about particular health or social topics? A recent blog underlines this question when it describes the difference between education and training (or education based on outdated factory models).  

The blog article, appearing in the Smart Blog on Education (Jun 9, 2014) suggests that " Our traditional approach to schools was based on a factory model where workers had to be “trained” to perform actions and repeat them in the same way and at the same time. Anything that distracted them from performing the way the factory prescribed was just a distraction to be extinguished as quickly as possible. A person’s natural interests, including the desire to socially connect to others, needed to be put aside in favor of the required work. Workers needed to be “trained” in a way of acting that was foreign to how they were naturally wired to learn. Since the work they did was arbitrary, relatively meaningless and tedious, they needed to be rewarded for performing in a certain way and penalized for performing in a different way." "In this factory model of schools, character and social/emotional skills are not integrated into the interactions between teachers and students. There is one main social skill: Do what you are told. Policymakers recognizing that schools are missing this social/character element decided to have character education and social emotional skill training inserted into the traditional structure of schools." "The environment and structure of a school sends a message to students that very often contradicts the content of many social emotional and character education programs. In addition, when the basic structure of schools does not change, neither do the attitudes of many teachers. It’s not surprising that many of them view these programs just as add-ons or distractions from teaching academic content. ".Instead of training students, schools should be educating them. Education comes from the Latin words e and ducere–meaning to lead out of. Education therefore is not about creating skills and abilities in people who are blank slates waiting to be shaped and molded. Education assumes that people come ready to learn with special abilities, capacities, interests and affinities, and need guidance and support from human relationships for their unique human qualities to come out." 

Based on this analysis, can we truly say that we are guiding students to learn about their health and social development based on their interests, needs and abilities, OR, are we designing instructional programs to teach specific, predetermined content to all students based on a factory style approach?  

(From Politico) First lady Michelle Obama and school lunch ladies used to be on the same team, but now they’re locked in a political war against each other. For the first three years of Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign, the School Nutrition Association, a powerful group that represents 55,000 cafeteria professionals, was a close ally in the White House push to get kids to eat healthier. Fast-forward to today: SNA is standing shoulder to shoulder with House Republicans, pushing to grant schools waivers from the requirements if they are losing money and aiming to relax the standards when the law is reauthorized next year. The story behind the school lunch flip-flop is a complicated web of lobbying change-ups, industry influence and partisan posturing inside the Beltway. It also casts a spotlight on how difficult it is to make the economics of school meals work — and just how much resistance there can be to Washington directing nationwide change. Read more

From the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #1, 2014 of Physical and Health Education Academic journal review the socialization of PE teachers. The authors note that "Teacher socialization is a term used to describe the socializing processes that influence a teacher’s beliefs, assumptions, and values regarding teaching. The nature, quality and effectiveness of teaching is greatly influenced by a teacher’s early socializing experiences. Using Lortie’s (1975) theoretical framework, Lawson (1983a) identified three main kinds of socialization that teachers face: (a) Acculturation: this includes actions, beliefs, and value systems that are learned from birth and foster ideologies about, in this case, professional conduct. (b) Professional socialization: this is the process through which prospective and practicing teachers learn and maintain the values deemed ideal for teaching physical education. Professional socialization is strongly influenced by recruits’ experiences as a K-12 school student (the period of time described by Lortie 
(1975) as the apprenticeship of observation). These experiences inform recruits’ subjective warrant, which consists of their beliefs about the requirements for being a physical education teacher. (c) Organizational socialization: this process serves to maintain the “traditional skills” valued by institutions and organizations. Organizational socialization may work against change in order to uphold traditions and routines." 

The review (full text available free) concludes that "there have been several patterns to emerge in socialization research since 2000, most notably in the increasingly progressive, “teaching-oriented” views that many physical education recruits now hold. In particular, the findings suggest that teaching orientations are now more prevalent in recruits than they were prior to 2000. Attached to this finding is a general pattern that physical education teachers today are more likely now than in the past to develop a student-centered holistic approach to teaching physical education that develops the “whole-student”, one who is socially responsible and aware. While there appears to be less evidence supporting the presence of coaching orientations in recruits which is likely due to a change in the modern recruit’s acculturation, we feel that this finding should be treated with caution, as it does not suggest that coaching orientations are “things of the past” or are no longer present in physical education. There are still many recruits who do come to physical education with the aim of becoming coaches and the sport-centred philosophies to physical education content and pedagogy that tend to come with this mindset. Read more>>