Healthy Living in Schools: SD73
Building a Culture of Healthy Living in Schools
Mike Johnson, one of only 18 Health Schools coordinators in the province, shared his program and its successes with us. SD73 is a leader in the Healthy Living philosophy, encouraging classroom and extra-curricular activity in addition to PE classes, and nutrition study through school gardens.
Why Healthy Living in Schools?
1981 overweight children: 15% boys; 15% girls
1996 overweight children: 35% boys; 29% girls
1981 obese children: 5% boys; 5% girls
1996 obese children: 17% boys; 15% girls
This is the first cohort in which parents are expected to outlive their children due to obesity and related diseases.
Successes in Kamloops Schools include:
Dallas Elementary: Junior and Senior Skipping Teams - boys and girls, practicing 3x/week. They have traveled to the lower mainland for training and present to other schools in the district. Skipping teams are catching on everywhere!
Ralph Bell Elementary: Children are learning and playing non-traditional sports in PE, selling healthy foods in their school store, and creating school gardens using the big buddy/little buddy system. They are also participants in the Action Schools BC initiative, which encourages in-class activity in all subjects.
Sahali Secondary: When the students at Sahali told principle Bob Cowden that they left the school at breaks and lunch in order to sit together and visit, he ordered tables for a common area. Now, many students stay in the school, enjoying the common area and the healthy options sold through the school cafeteria.
Juniper Ridge Elementary: Sahali Secondary Leadership students traveled to Juniper Ridge to teach those students playground games we all grew up with: tether ball, four-square, and others, hoping to interrupt the fascination with hand-held video games during recess!
30 minutes of Daily Physical Activity (DPA) will be a requirement in SD73 schools next year. It sounds like some schools are already well on their way!