Provides Opportunities to Make Positive Connections with Influential Others
Description: An effective curriculum links students to influential persons who affirm and reinforce health-promoting norms, attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors. Instructional strategies build on protective factors that promote healthy behaviors and enable students to avoid or reduce health risk behaviors by engaging peers, parents, families, and other positive adult role models in student learning. Teachers should not assume that all parents, guardians, or caregivers are positive influences and that every student has a positive influential person in their life. Therefore, it is important to help connect students with positive, influential adults in the school and the community.1
Example 1
For this teaching example, the lesson being taught is focused on personal safety and how to get help when ill or injured. The Healthy Behavior Outcome (HBO) for the lesson is S-7: Get help for self or others when injured or suddenly ill (HECAT Appendix 3).
1. The focus of this lesson is to connect students with the school nurse as a trusted school-based health helper.
2. The teacher invites the school nurse to speak to the students about the ways the school nurse helps students to stay healthy. The school nurse also talks about how they help students if they become injured or ill.
3. The class then visits the school nurse’s office. The school nurse describes basic instruments and supplies used when a student visits because of illness or injury.
4. Following the visit to the nurse’s office, the school nurse and the teacher explain that the students should always tell their teacher or another trusted adult (e.g., the playground supervisor) if they are or become injured or ill. Telling a trusted adult right away can help students get the care they need from a school nurse or other adult.
5. The students are then given a diagram of the school that shows the locations of their classroom as well as the school nurse’s office. The students draw a path from their classroom to the school nurse’s office as well as a path from the playground to the school nurse’s office.
Example 2
For this teaching example, the lesson being taught is safe participation in regular physical activity, and the HBOs for the lesson are PA-1: Engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity for at least 60 minutes every day; PA-2: Regularly engage in physical activities that enhance cardiorespiratory endurance, flexibility, muscle endurance, and muscle strength; and PA-6: Avoid injury during physical activity (HECAT Appendix 3).
1. The focus of this lesson is to connect students with the physical education teacher as a trusted adult at school who helps them learn about being active and safe when engaging in physical activity before, during, and after school.
2. The teacher invites the physical education teacher to meet with the students on the school’s playground to lead the students through a series of safety activities for using playground space and equipment to help students build healthy hearts, lungs, and muscles.
3. After the students return to the classroom, the teacher gives the students a diagram of the playground that includes all major playground equipment and asks the students to circle three pieces of equipment that could be unsafe if used incorrectly. The students are placed in pairs where they are asked to come up with two safety rules to help make using the playground equipment safer. For example, if the students chose a long slide, two safety rules might include using the slide one at a time and moving away after using the slide. Students are then asked to verbally share their safety rules.
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