Wellness at School

The following blog post was inspired by an article in the NEA Today magazine titled “Get up and move!” published in the spring of 2012. 

The Goodrell Wellness Wall

I am grateful to be part of a school that focuses on the wellness of our students and staff.  We are pushing towards creating a school wellness policy/creed for next year and I am really excited about it.  I have been trying to get up and move as much as possible during the day to promote my physical and emotional wellness.  After reading this article, I feel even more passionately about the impact of exercise on my own and my students’ intellectual wellness.  The article points out how exercise during the school day has led to a boost in student learning and has been shown to improve student behavior.  Exercise releases chemicals in the brain that can help make the brain ready to learn and focus. 

Goodrell Teachers participated in Live Healthy Iowa's Step-It-Up Challenge

As the article points out, getting students enough exercise for their physical, emotional and intellectual health has gotten even harder with budget cuts targeting programs such as physical education and recess.    According to the article, “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that children and adolescents get 60 minutes or more of physical activity every day.”  As a teacher, I feel it is my responsibility to make a difference in the life of my students and I am willing to “sacrifice a little seat time for exercise” in order to help set my students up for success in my classroom and in life.  I am excited about several of the resources on the NEA website and others so that I can find engaging ways to take a break to stretch our bodies and minds.

Here are some great resources I will be using and I hope they can be helpful for you, your children, or if you are also a teacher, for your students.

http://www.neahin.org/educator-resources/hshl/all-move-healthy.pdf

http://www.jamschoolprogram.com/

http://www.eatsmartmovemorenc.com/Energizers/Middle.html

http://www.yourtherapysource.com/files/10_simple_activities_classroom.pdf

http://johnratey.typepad.com/SattelRatey.pdf

http://www.toniyancey.com/IRResources.html

http://www.letsmove.gov/healthy-schools