“Maintaining Balance” in schools August 10, 2020 by Taylor Walsh Maintaining Balance in schools in a thoroughly unbalanced time Beyond Academics and Well-being? Among the guidelines for school openings that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued on May 5 and June 25 were several that are well aligned with the outcomes and purpose of school-based wellness activities. In “COVID-19 Planning Considerations: Return to In-person Education in Schools” the AAP said regarding the approach schools should take at re-opening: If the academic expectations are unrealistic, school will likely become a source of further distress for students (and educators) at a time when they need additional support. It is also critical to maintain a balanced curriculum with continued physical education and other learning experiences rather than an exclusive emphasis on core subject areas.” AAP doesn’t name school gardens, mindful moments, brain breaks, preparing meals, and plenty of time in nature specifically in that bullet point. But it could have. These are the most potent “other learning experiences” we know of for attaining beneficial outcomes in academics and in supporting mental, emotional and social well-being. And as the type of counter-balance to concentrated academics that AAP cautions about. Webinar on Balancing Academics and Well-being The question of how to elevate awareness of these positive outcomes for education leadership was the subject of our July 17 webinar “Balancing Academics and Wellbeing During School Openings, 2020.” Forty advisors, partners and colleagues described their own extensive experiences delivering school-based programs and discussed the factors that educators should be considering as they organize the unorthodox schedules and program adjustments that will begin the school year. The objective of this meeting was to compile the high points of the discussion and share them with education, policy and financing leaders in the weeks and months ahead. Among those points: The time is now to emphasize the social, mental and behavioral benefits that these programs have demonstrated Educators may say they have no time for gardens or teaching kitchens They are also looking for the means to support mental and social emotional health Engaging with parents particularly now is critical There may be interesting comparative research to conduct in this period (Click here for a brief summary of the webinar.) Sustaining the Balance It is not possible to know whether or how schools might follow the AAP’s guidelines and start to integrate any wellness learning program or method, especially with distance learning required for the vast majority of schools starting the fall semester. Courtesy Green Schoolyards America — Drew Kelly Photography Tracking the implementation of these programs during this school year (if not implementing them directly) will be important for members of the whole health learning community. As the webinar conversation showed, leaders in these wellness domains are already extending their work, missions and partnerships. Very notable right now is the growing interest in “outdoor classrooms” (a response used widely 100+ years ago when tuberculosis and flu pandemics raged). Green Schoolyards America is now hosting multiple Zoom meetings each week to help teachers and educators around the country as part of its National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative. These working groups organize topics that would be helpful to any whole health learning activity: Outdoor classroom infrastructure Park/school collaboration Outdoor learning and instructional models Staffing and formal/nonformal partnerships School program integration (with PE, recess, before/after care) Community engagement Health and safety considerations Local and state policy shifts Funding and economic model In these sessions presenters often discuss highly innovative solutions that they and their colleagues are creating out of sheer necessity. See more about the Outdoor Learning Alliance here. Long Term Balance? Among other things, COVID has presented U.S. education with the opportunity to build on academic and health improving activities that have long been available but have had no point of entry into — or a sustainable presence in — the core learning framework. This is true for demonstrated academic benefits and their potential to offset the impact and deep persistence of Adverse Childhood Experiences, trauma, and debilitating social determinants of health. The most important long-term impacts and effects of any COVID-driven re-balancing aren’t likely be about how schools apportion time for school gardens vs. geometry. Rather it will be whether or not any of those “other learning experiences” that the AAP recommends for coping with COVID remain in place. That depends on whether educators and the public come to see that imparting knowledge and skills that support physical, emotional and social well-being in should be an essential K-12 task for fully preparing their kids for their adult lives. In the meantime: as we asked at the start of our July Webinar: “What can we do Right Now?” to support kids and families, faculties and communities to establish the habits and activities that will carry everyone through this period safely and in their best health? One answer quite literally just appeared during the composition of that paragraph: in the form of a Tweet from Child and Nature Network (@ChildrenNature) reporting that innovations won’t necessarily come after Zoom meetings: “A D.C. teacher uses his stimulus check to start a nonprofit, so he can take kids fishing.” Let that sink in. Now let’s check it out: A new Inner City Angler in DC getting ready. Teacher-guided: CHECK Collaborative learning: CHECK Hands-on (literally, on the reel): CHECK In Nature: CHECK “Harvesting” food: CHECK All while socially distanced: CHECK So is born the D.C. non-profit: Inner City Anglers . And perhaps not a little hope, fun and enthusiasm on the rivers and streams around DC. As founder Carmen Garner writes: “It is the goal of ICA to instill social-emotional awareness, perseverance, self-confidence, empathy and other life skills along their paths to adulthood.” More about the webinar and WholeHealthED balancing these: Full Webinar Recording: https://bit.ly/33LHQuD The journal article, “Whole Health Learning: The Revolutionary Child of Integrative Health and Education” Contribution to the ASCDInService Blog: “Balancing academics and wellness during COVID-19 and beyond”
COVID-19: Resources and Webinar June 24, 2020 by Taylor Walsh Collected COVID-19 school guidance resources • “Balancing Academics and Wellbeing:” a July webinar • Exciting new project with the Whole Health Institute. Collected COVID-19 school guidance resources We’re continuing to build our site Resources Section, adding important policy and operating guidance for schools’ and families’ response to COVID-19. These articles, research studies, and policy papers have been prepared by many of the leading and most experienced organizations working in schools and communities across the whole health spectrum: The COVID Resources section is here. “Balancing Academics and Wellbeing for School Return in 2020” This July 17 webinar will bring together WholeHealthED advisors, partners and colleagues to consider how the combined positive health outcomes experienced by students and faculty who participate in whole health programs might help school officials plan for the return to school by emphasizing access to activities that can help offset the trauma and stress that most families will still experience. On May 5, the American Academy of Pediatrics published unambiguous guidance on this issue: “COVID-19 Planning Considerations: Return to In-person Education in Schools” . Notable excerpts: Under EDUCATION: • “If the academic expectations are unrealistic, school will likely become a source of further distress for students (and educators) at a time when they need additional support. • It is also critical to maintain a balanced curriculum with continued physical education and other learning experiences rather than an exclusive emphasis on core subject areas.” Under MENTAL HEALTH: • “Schools need to incorporate (into planning considerations) academic accommodations and supports for students who may still be having difficulty concentrating or learning new information due to stress associated with the pandemic.” The discussion will consider how those “other learning experiences” could be made available to schools during re-openings, however and whenever they take place. We’ll report the outcomes of this collaborative assessment and recommendations in the weeks following during a follow-on webinar designed for school leaders and educators Important new project with Whole Health Institute As WholeHealthED advanced the idea of whole health learning in K-12, other notable enterprises that embrace whole health thinking and precepts have been forming around the country. One of the most important was established in January when the Whole Health Institute and Chopra Research Library was formed by philanthropist Alice Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas. The mission of the Institute is to help people live a full and meaningful life by making the Whole Health approach affordable and accessible to everyone. The Institute will focus its work on transforming health and well-being by working from the very successful whole health model created and established in recent years within the VA, the nation’s largest healthcare system. (The creator and director of The VA initiative, Tracy Gaudet MD, now heads up WHI.) As COVID-19 blocked all in-person activities in the first quarter, the Institute’s whole health orientation and our approach in schools led to initial conversations based on our shared professional and collegial roots in integrative healthcare. These ultimately led to the creation of a project that is being built around our common interests in bringing whole person wellbeing to kids. As Dr. Gaudet explained in a May interview: We didn’t have this area of K-12 education highlighted originally. But with all of the trauma of uncertainty and fear around COVID I dread that we are creating a whole new generation of kids with ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences). We shifted because of COVID and because we have the right partner.” We’ll report more on this work in the weeks ahead. (For more on the antecedents of the Institute’s mission and purpose and the development of the whole health framework in the VA, see this report on the formal introduction of WHI last January.)
Education and Health Advisory Boards Formed June 6, 2020 by Taylor Walsh An Infrastructure of Self-Care? • We’re thrilled to announce the spring formation of two advisory boards to offer perspective, experience and guidance to the project. Education Advisory Board Kate Tumelty Felice EdD The Education Advisory Board is chaired by Kate Tumelty Felice EdD who developed the WholeHealthED Wellness Studies program that was implemented in four middle schools in southern New Jersey in the spring semester of 2019. Board members all share work experiences and commitment in and around elementary and secondary schools: as school-based coordinators for garden or wellness programs, as specialists who bring these programs to schools, as innovative district leaders, and as policy and research specialists and adherents of Social and Emotional Learning, SEL and the Whole Child (WSCC) movement. Health Advisory Board. Please see members of the Education Advisory Board here. Health Advisory Board Larry Rosen MD The Health Advisory Board, chaired by Larry Rosen MD, includes pediatricians from across the country. Many are members of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Integrative Medicine, SOIM. They serve families from private and public pediatric clinics, work with Childrens’ hospitals, serve as research specialists affiliated with academic schools of medicine, and as contributors to initiatives created to mitigate the tides of Adverse Childhood Experiences and trauma. Members are committed to the principles of whole child health and appreciate the role that whole health learning can play in supporting children’s health and wellbeing, in mind, body and spirit. See members of the Health Advisory Board here. The creation of the Education and Health boards is part of our mission to bring together innovative stakeholders who are and have been deeply engaged in improving kids’ knowledge about the factors that influence health through academic and experiential learning, strengthening children’s health during their years in school, and forming a solid foundation for their adult lives. It is not usual of course to think of a connection between a school garden and a pediatrician’s office (but check out one pediatrician’s garden-informed practice below). But the adherents of both school-based wellness learning and integrative pediatric medicine (when not treating sickness and injury) are working toward a very similar outcome: Imparting to children an awareness of the importance of sustaining their own best health, while providing the knowledge, experience, tools and methods that let them know they can do it themselves. Formation of the Education and Health advisory boards will help shed greater light on the overlapping paths the members and their institutions are taking in support of such an outcome.
Briefing for NIH : Mental, Emotional and Behavioral Health March 31, 2020 by Taylor Walsh While COVID-19 may have forced unparalleled “physical distancing” on the population, it has also inspired re-assessments, innovations and taking the time to look at things from new vantage points. This is particularly true now as the well documented health benefits of time in nature become more widely known. NIH Focus on Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health: A Visit to Bethesda A school garden like the one above at Lafayette Elementary School in Washington — prepared but untended in the wake of the pandemic — would certainly be a new vantage point for the nation’s leading healthcare researchers. As it happens, the idea of linking a student’s time in a school garden with reducing stress and anxiety was the focus of a unique briefing at NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, NCCIH, Bethesda, MD on March 4. Working with NCCIH Deputy Director David Shurtleff we arranged a briefing for a few colleagues to hear from researchers very experienced with wellness activities now well established in K-12: mindfulness, PE and fitness, nature and environmental education, yoga, garden and food prep, and SEL. In recent years NIH has been steadily developing an interest in examining the increasing difficulties in mental, emotional, and behavioral (or MEB) health in the U.S. population. In 2018 NCCIH hosted a workshop on “Emotional Well-Being: Emerging Insights and Questions for Future Research” that included profiles on school interventions aimed at students and teachers. NCCIH was later a co-sponsor with the CDC and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (SAMHSA) of this report released by the National Academies of Science in September, 2019: Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development in Children and Youth: A National Agenda Not surprisingly, apart from simple mention of social and emotional learning there was no mention of other school-base wellness programs. But Dr. Shurtleff saw in whole health approaches in schools potential alignment with two important points of strategic emphasis for NCCIH: 1) Embracing a whole-person-health framework for its work, and 2) Addressing these MEB impacts on wellbeing in the population at large What was envisioned last December as a small, informal briefing became a 20-person gathering, including NCCIH Director Helene Langevin, Dr. Shurtleff and other NCCIH senior staff. Our briefing team included: Erica Sibinga MD, Associate Professor, Division of General Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Science of Learning Institute Chair, Section on Integrative Medicine, American Academy of Pediatrics Chris D’Adamo PhD, Assistant Professor, Family & Community Medicine University of Maryland School of Medicine Director of Research, Center for Integrative Medicine Jennifer Sacheck PhD, Sanofi Professor of Prevention and Wellness Chair, Dept. Exercise and Nutrition Sciences George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health Kimberly T. Kendzoira PhD, Managing Researcher, American Institutes for Research Social and Emotional Learning and Education Sarah Haines PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Biological Sciences, Science and Environmental Education, Towson University Cathy Jordan Phd, LP, Prof. of Pediatrics, U of Minnesota; Director of Research Children & Nature Network Two DC-area WholeHealthED advisors, Kevin Berry, MD and Wendy Bohdel joined as well. This 90-minute discussion was a first occasion to consider the health-creating potential of combined wellness programs available across the nation on K-12 campuses. (It was the first time anyone could recall hearing from experts in these diverse domains.) Dr. Shurtleff graciously tweeted out after the meeting: @NIH_NCCIH is pleased to be part of the conversation on how best to focus whole-health research across the lifespan, especially with children and adolescents using school-based and other innovative approaches… It is very important work that fits with our strategic objective to “Foster Health Promotion and Disease Prevention” Expanding traditional healthcare’s view of “prevention” to include student experiences in collaborative, hands-on wellness programs during their school years would be a major step in shifting the view that these experiences are “nice-to-have” extracurriculars (of uncertain sustainability) to essential-to-have pieces for a complete 21st century education. (NCCIH Director Langevin discusses whole-person-health during this Feb. 2020 webinar on the NCCIH Strategic Plan, 2021-2026.)
Wellness Studies in NJ: “Significant difference” November 12, 2019 by Taylor Walsh First implementations of WholeHealthED Studies at four NJ middle schools bring favorable assessment A survey of middle school students attending four schools in Cumberland County NJ who participated in the spring 2019 semester in our Wellness Studies Program showed significant improvement in their appreciation for multiple health-improving activities that are at the core of the curriculum. Cumberland County, with Vineland and Millville, NJ The survey was conducted by the regional offices of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program (21st CCLC), which is funded by the US Dept. of Education through local school districts. Program director Cynthia Angelo engaged the independent evaluation firm LinchPin Solutions of Mt. Laurel, NJ to conduct pre- and post-participation evaluation surveys among students who participated in the after-school programs. We were very pleased and gratified to read their conclusion: “Overall, across every domain, students reported more knowledge, increased positive behavior, and more self-awareness, from pre- to post- surveys. The CEZ 21st CCLC Health and Wellness Program appears to have made a significant difference for the participants of this project.” (CEZ = Cumberland County Empowerment Zone) “Across every domain” is key, as it refers to the curriculum’s core design premise: blending multiple wellness activities into a unified learning program. The after-school programs included mindfulness, nutrition and food preparation, fitness and PE, and outdoor and nature learning. As noted by P.J. Ragone, of the Inspira Health Network and leader of the fitness workshops: “What I appreciate most about the program is that it doesn’t just address one aspect of wellness. This program allowed me to educate the students on proper nutrition, physical activity as well as mental health.” Other workshops were led by specialists from Wellness in the Schools, WITS, of NYC; Holistic Life Foundation of Baltimore, and Project Little Warriors of Camden. The curriculum and a basic evaluation tool were developed initially for Lakeside Middle School in Millville for school-day workshop presentations by Kate Tumelty Felice, EdD, Director of Programs for WholeHealthED and Education Programs Coordinator, Associate Professor at Rowan College of South Jersey in Vineland. The program was then adopted by the 21st CCLC. As part of organizing the workshop teams and resources Dr. Felice included as support during workshops her students from Cumberland College some of whom are preparing to enter K-12 classrooms themselves. She dubbed them “wellness ambassadors.” For more details on the study and program, including sample survey Q&As, plus provider and faculty comments SEE OUR PAGE HERE.
The 100 Million: Obesity in the US September 12, 2019 by Taylor Walsh Perhaps the first inspiration for the formation of WholeHealthED was the projection made six or seven years ago by the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) for adult chronic illnesses that looked like this: Today TFAH and its partners issued results from their 2018 survey of the prevalence of obesity in all the states. The projected increase from 36% to 50% is still at its full and demoralizing pace. The report was released with this summary: “U.S. Obesity Rates Reach Historic Highs – Racial, Ethnic, Gender and Geographic Discrepancies Continue to Persist … Obesity is a growing epidemic in the United States – and has been for decades. Currently, about one in three Americans of all ages – or more than 100 million people – have obesity.” The 2018 Snapshot. The full TFAH report is here. The question I asked myself the first time I came across the 2012 version of this map and those dismal projections for adult chronic illness — “Whose job is it to see that this doesn’t happen?” — clearly has become even more urgent by the year. The report lists a set of recommendations that include a couple that have some resonance for whole health conditions in schools: an excise tax for sugary drinks, the proceeds for which would “address health and socioeconomic disparities;” plus more emphasis on nutrition and exercise. It includes this disconcerting recommendation: “Ensure that CDC has enough funding to grant every state appropriate funding to implement evidence-based obesity prevention strategies (as of this writing, CDC only has enough funding to work with 16 states” — emphasis mine). Perhaps this is a measure of how the opioid/addiction epidemic has plundered public coffers? Which path to take? There is no mention yet of the potential for educating young people themselves with knowledge and experiential learning that has the potential for keeping them off the paths to adult chronic illness once they depart secondary school and ultimately reach their 40s and 50s. This is primarily because obesity and its consequent healths issue are rightly seen as matter for the healthcare system to mitigate and redress. In too many neighborhoods after all, kids suffer from the effects of trauma and ACEs, poor nutrition, social dysfunction and difficult rest and sleep. While the healthcare system’s response to this epidemic is understandably based on interventions. The WholeHealthED view makes a fundamentally different proposition: Mitigating the obesity problem is not (only) a healthcare task. It is a learning task. With the world’s greatest learning infrastructure in place — battered and bruised though it may be — it includes a multitude of campuses where the variety of whole health learning programs that we propose are in place. Thus they are in place to expand upon and tie together in academic and experiential learning programs that support objectives for SEL and building resilience. This unified learning experience is expressed at the moment in our Wellness Studies Program. It presents, we hope, an alternative path to the one that high school graduates step onto each June. Can there actually be delight in the whole health learning experience? Taylor is the founder and Executive Director of WholeHealthED. Reach him at taylorwalshdc@gmail.com