Discussion post

I recommend you complete Part 1 by Thursday, March 18.Complete Part 1 before viewing the supplementary material for Part 2. 

The 3 parts are due Sunday, March 21 by 11:59PM CT.

Health teachers in public schools often face the challenge of high school/federal standards to meet paired with limited classroom time and resources. For example, take a look at the guidelines for promoting healthy eating on page 175 in your text; the HBOs for physical activity on page 178; and the physical activity guidelines on page 182. These standards and guidelines illustrate the height of the bar set for health teachers to meet. Pair this with the reality of teaching…you might only have your students in class from 15-minutes per day to 2-hours total per week! How are you, one person, going to serve these students with any level of depth or quality? Sounds almost impossible, doesn’t it? But it is not…and I believe that YOU as an individual and ALL of you together as a class can come up with some creative lesson plan ideas — or even school-wide program ideas— for how to meet the very real challenges of time, limited resources, and limited budgets in order to provide quality health education for your future students! 

Part 1 Brainstorm an Initial Idea for Teaching and Learning to Address the Scenario Above: 

Here’s the situation: You are a new teacher teaching in a low-income school district. Many of your students and their families are receiving services such as Medicaid, food stamps, and are involved in subsidized programs, such as free school breakfasts. In talking with your students you learn that many of them do not have basic knowledge about nutrition, where food comes from, or how to go about buying or preparing healthy food. You also learn that many of your students are quite sedentary. What can you do to not only teach but also empower your students, their families, and their community for long-term change in the way they eat, exercises, and cook? You’re only one health teacher with limited resources, and at the moment, no extra funding. 

But you are not discouraged because education is empowering! You want to create a lesson plan or program to meet some of the standards set forth in your textbook (pages 175, 178, and 182). You want to create a lesson plan or program to raise awareness and build solid health skills and knowledge — but you also know you cannot do this alone. You cannot do it all without funding, and more importantly, without the support of school staff, parents, and other community leaders (page 176-177). 

For this first part of the DB, I want you to brainstorm out your best idea(s) for how to solve and address the challenges described in the scenario above. For this DB — create a learning unit that addresses the issues above. (Yes, I know this is a lot — teachers are asked to do the impossible on a regular basis). You may wish to approach your brainstorm as a mini IPW (lesson plan). Be sure to include the following items in your brainstorm idea:

1. Create a learning goal statement to address all of the following: healthy nutrition, preparing food, physical activity (1-3 sentences — keep it brief). The learning goal should describe what students will be able to know, do, and understand at the end of the learning program. The statement should also include a brief statement saying how this learning goal meets health education standards. 
2. Describe how you will know if the goal(s) of your learning statement has been met. In other words, how will the learning be assessed? How will you know if the students actually can do, know or understand what you wanted them to accomplish?
3. Describe how you would create a program — with no budget — to achieve the learning goal, AND how you would involve parents, school staff, and other members of the community to contribute to or be a part of this program.
4. List a minimum of 3 concerns that might be raised by either parents or school staff regarding your plan, and how you would address these 3 concerns.  Consider social determinants of health. Consider environmental challenges such as food deserts & lack of green space.

Remember that Part 1 is brainstorming – you are free to be creative and informal. (Although, you still have to write in complete sentences and present your work in an organized fashion).

Part 2 Modify and Improve your idea using the input and ideas from other people and sources: 

For Part 2, the goal of your work is to take your initial brainstorm idea and improve upon it by using both the information from the supplemental material and ideas from your classmates. 

1. Watch and read the material in the “Supplemental Materials for DB 3” folder. Then read through your classmates’ posts. Take notes for how you might use ideas from the supplemental materials AND the ideas of your classmates in order to improve/modify your brainstorm idea. 
2. Return to the DB, to your initial post, and click “Edit Post” to add to your original post. Do NOT erase your brainstorm idea! Instead, start a new section under what you have written for your brainstorm. You are now going to write out a modified version of your brainstorm. Use the supplemental materials and the ideas posted by your classmates to make your modifications. 
3. After you complete the modification of your brainstorm idea. Write a brief paragraph to reflect on this process. Follow the next 3 prompts in order to think critically and reflectively about your process.

Prompts for Reflection:

1. Based upon what you read and saw as presented in the supplemental material — How would you use the material to modify and change your brainstorm idea for the better? Explain your reasoning.
2. Give an example (at least one, two is better) of what you would add or how you would change your idea, and why. I will be looking for specific references to the supplemental material, your text, and your classmates’ ideas in this section. 
3. Finally, briefly describe what was the most surprising thing you learned from reading and seeing how other people approached teaching and learning, doing, and engaging others in addressing the health topics of food, nutrition, eating, cooking, and physical activity.  

Part 3 – Responses to Classmates (minimum of 2 posts). Read through one another’s posts and complete the following:

1.  Read your peers’ posts for Part 1 & 2. Select at least one peer’s post and add to the ideas they have posted. 1) Tell them what you believe is good about their brainstorm and the modifications they made. 2. If relevant, make one specific suggestion for how to improve what they created for Part 2. 
2. Pick one more classmate who posted ideas that inspired you to make changes in your own ideas. Describe to them what you learned from and took from their post. Describe how you would incorporate and use their ideas to improve your own idea(s).