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Learning Personal and Social Skills: Bringing Children's Health Education into the 21st Century

Beth Pateman, co-author of Health Education: Elementary and Middle-Level Applications

What was health education like when you were in school? Ho-hum? The same stuff every year? What did you do on rainy days when you couldn't go outside for physical education? An endless array of worksheets that didn't relate to your life?

The health education many of us remember was a series of disconnected lectures about categorizing foods into groups, covering sneezes, washing hands, and just saying no to drugs. What we heard may have seemed unimportant, and some of it may have been inaccurate. No wonder health education was such a forgettable subject!

In contrast, today's health education helps young people learn the personal and social skills they need as they grow from child to adolescent, to young adult. Health Education: Elementary and Middle-Level Applications provides the background knowledge teachers need, along with standards-based learning strategies and assessments to engage K-8 students in learning to stay safe and healthy. The book helps teachers deal with important day-to-day issues in the classroom, such as bullying, understanding puberty and adolescence, establishing a mentally and emotionally healthy environment, staying safe, and dealing with pressures to participate in high-risk behaviors, such as smoking or alcohol use.

The National Health Education Standards, which form the basis for the learning strategies, can be easily adapted to state or district standards to address:

1. Core concepts-Learning the most important information for staying healthy and safe.
2. Analyzing internal and external influences on health-Thinking about how feelings, curiosity, family, peers, media, and culture affect health behavior.
3. Accessing information, products, and services-Practicing skills to locate and use the best resources for health.
4. Interpersonal communication-Practicing effective verbal and nonverbal communication strategies to use in tough situations.
5. Decision making-Thinking through a process for making smart decisions.
6. Goal setting-Learning to set and work toward clearly defined personal goals.
7. Self-management-Practicing skills for healthy behaviors, such as positive self-talk, stress management, dealing with strong feelings, injury and disease prevention, and personal care.
8. Advocacy-Going beyond one's own interests to take a stand to promote and protect the health of others.

In addition, educators will find many ideas for integrating language and literacy, mathematics, social studies, science, and the arts with health education. Consider the following questions: What did Sophie do when she became really, really angry? How about Alexander, when he had a bad day? What does 2% milk mean if it's not really low in fat? How do movies and advertisements influence our ideas about what's good or normal? Why don't we get HIV from a mosquito bite? How can music or participating in the arts help us manage stress?

Healthy children make better learners. Children are naturally curious to learn more about themselves and the world around them, and today's health education helps them do just that. When teachers promote health, they boost academic achievement. Health Education: Elementary and Middle-Level Applications can help educators take their curriculum to exciting new places. For more information, visit www.mhhe.com/telljohann5e.