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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:

• American Association for Health Education (AAHE)
• American Association for Physical Activity and Recreation (AAPAR)
• National Association for Girls & Women in Sports (NAGWS)
• National Association for Sport & Physical Education (NASPE)
• National Dance Association (NDA)

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.

Going Green

Healthy Schools Network is committed to ensuring that every child has access to a healthy learning environment that is clean and in good repair. The Network operates the Healthy Schools/Healthy Kids Clearinghouse that provides guidelines and materials to promote healthier school environmental practices. It also sponsors National Healthy Schools Day, this year on April 28, 2008.

The Green School Initiative, a project of Earthways Foundation, publishes The Little Green Schoolhouse: Thinking Big About Ecological Sustainability, Children's Environmental Health, and K-12 Education in the USA.

Be Safe Healthy Schools provides a Back To School Environmental Checklist and reports on school siting laws and regulations.

The Collaborative for High Performance Schools developed guidelines for green school buildings that have since been adopted by several other states. It sponsors an annual Green Tools for Healthy Schools.

The Natural Resources Defense Fund offers the Green Squad, an interactive web site to guide students in conducting an environmental audit of their school. The site is also available in Spanish.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) offers ideas for community service projects for high school students at its High School Environmental Center. EPA also makes environmental education grants to schools.

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.