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Professional Development Resources

Professional Organizations

AAHPERD - American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance

An alliance of six national associations, six district associations, and a research consortium that supports healthy lifestyles through high-quality programs:

ASHA American School Health Association

Multidisciplinary organization to protect and promote the health and well-being of children and youth through coordinated school health programs. Find your state or regional version of these national organizations and get involved.

Cyber Bullying

Stop Bullying Now!, a campaign from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, offers a wide range of resources to educators about how to effectively address bullying, including cyber bullying.

iKeepSafe.org provides leadership in Internet safety education. Its resources include a K-12 curriculum to help students avoid dangerous, inappropriate or unlawful online behavior and community outreach programs to parents, law enforcement, and community leaders.

bNETS@avvy from the National Education Association Health Information Network is a bi-monthly newsletter for parents and teachers that provides tools to help students between 9 and 14 to stay safer online.

NetSmartz, a joint venture of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and Boys & Girls Clubs of America, contains interactive materials on cyber bullying for use in the classroom.

Delete Cyberbullying is a public advertising campaign targeting teens to prevent cyber bullying from the National Crime Prevention Council.

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) has resources about cyber bullying available at its web page, New Technology and Youth Violence. It includes a link to the CDC-sponsored December 2007 Supplement of the Journal of Adolescent Health which features a collection of articles on the topic—"Youth Violence and Electronic Media: Similar Behaviors, Different Venues?"

Integrating Health into Instruction

Two good resources for learning more about the integration of health instruction into the curriculum include Health Instruction: Theory and Application (5th edition) by John Foder, Gus Dalis and Susan Giarratano-Russell (Williams & Wilkins, 1994), and Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design & Implementation, edited by Heidi Hayes Jacobs (ASCD, 1989).

Differentiated Instruction

Carol Ann Tomlinson is a professor at the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia and a former Virginia Teacher of the Year. She has written several books on differentiated instruction, available from the Association for Curriculum Development and Supervision. Titles include:

How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed Ability Classrooms (2004)
The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners (2004)
Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design: Connecting Content and Kids (2006)
Fulfilling the Promise of the Differentiated Classroom: Strategies and Tools for Responsive Teaching (2003)

Backward Mapping

Understanding by Design (2005) by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe from Prentice-Hall provides practical tools and strategies for successful backward mapping in developing your lesson plans.

Advocating for School Health

Building Advocacy Skills to Promote School Health

Introductory Guide to Advocacy: Working to Improve Advocacy for School Health Education and Services is a 52-page publication from the American School Health Association. The guide helps teachers and school health professionals learn how to advocate for school health programs to improve the health and academic achievement of students. It includes an introduction to advocacy, an overview of four essential advocacy skills (grassroots mobilization, coalitions and partnerships, lobbying or influencing decision makers, and media/communications), a description of how policy and legislation are made at the school board and local, state, and federal levels, and a glossary of terms. For more information, go to http://www.ashaweb.org/store/products/6.

Working with School Board Members

From California Project Lean comes Reaching School Board Members, a guide for community groups on how to create "win-win" situations when working on school district nutrition and physical activity issues. The publication was developed through feedback and discussion with California school board members, superintendents, school principals, and parents. Reaching School Board Members is available in both English and Spanish as PDF documents. You can download the guide and find other publications related to school advocacy issues for both students and adults at http://www.californiaprojectlean.org/resourcelibrary/default.asp.

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