Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This is Dr. John Quick, Superintendent of Bartholomew Consolidated School
Corporation.
I hope this video will help you understand the expectations of the school wellness
policy, and inspire you to
find creative ways to implement it in your building. A Wellness Policy Advisory
Council meets yearly to evaluate progress
and share the successes of the school corporation's wellness policy.
This video will not answer all your questions, but you can get a copy of
policy 8510
on the Corporation website.
Healthy Communities published a Wellness Policy Guide for parents last spring.
English and Spanish versions of this guide are also available on the Corporation
website. Thank you.
A healthy school is one where parents, teachers, students, and staff come together
to promote a healthy lifestyle.
We can all take pride in this new policy, and we all also have a role in the implementation of the new
policy.
We want to make sure that the healthy choice is the easy choice. The
Corporation's wellness policy is a common sense approach. It should not be
entirely new to anybody.
We want to make certain that everybody understands about how physical fitness and activity
work together to go along with classroom activity.
In addition to physical health, physical activity also improves classroom behavior for the teachers and
the students.
There is a BCSC wellness committee made up of different representatives from each school building.
There are easy things that you can do to follow the policy:
Ensure that classroom parties have healthy options.
Do not give students food as a reward.
Provide opportunities for physical activity throughout the school day.
Teach your students about locally grown foods.
Incorporate nutrition into your core curriculum lessons.
Decorate your classrooms with posters that promote healthy lifestyles. And we all need
to remember that we are role models for our students and staff.
At Clifty Creek, we found a fun and easy way to get everyone exercising a little bit
more every day.
On our morning announcements, we have an exercise team and they spend about two minutes each day
exercising with the entire building at the same time
while they're in their classrooms.
Wacky Wednesday is a day where they
come on the intercom and also the television
and they put a song on, and you're allowed to dance and sing to it, and you can do all kinds of moves, and it's really fun. It helps keep kids
active throughout the week.
When you finish, you are proud of yourself, because
you accomplished something that you probably thought you weren't going to finish.
You walk
two miles and you think "I can't believe I did this"
It's something
really nice.
Here are some ways to keep your school healthy:
participate with Healthy Communities challenges, participate in the Mill
Race race and other fitness events in our community,
have school health fairs and student-parent fitness activities,
invite fitness and wellness specialists into your school, get outside and play with your
kids at recess.
You need to select at least one or two people in your school building to be
in charge and go from there.
Be creative.
Our food service department has been making many improvements for healthy choices.
Our dedicated cooking staff attended culinary workshops presented by
Chef Sydney Story. Chef Sydney Story is recognized by the White House as one of the top 10 school chefs
in the Nation.
At the end of the day after recess they come with trays of broccoli,
cauliflower,
strawberries, and dried cherries.
Some people would be like "No, I'm not going to do it." And they would say you have to try. Some
people would say
"Oh, I actually do like this."
Safe routes to school is a national movement to create a safe, healthy, and fun
environment for children to walk and bike to school.
Safe routes can play a role in reversing childhood obesity and
inactivity. Today,
fewer than fifteen percent of schoolchildren walk or bike to school.
As a result, children are less active, independent, and healthy as they have been
in past generations.
When the culture of the school revolves around safe choices, positive modelling, and healthy initiatives,
everyone wins.
We're really proud that BCSC has the highest benchmark in Indiana for a wellness policy. It is
now time for all of us to come together, embrace the policy, and move forward with the plan of action.