Week 3 - HPE for you

Week 3: HPE for you                                                           14-03-2017     

Overview 

Today we had a speaker from Move Well Eat Well join us and we discussed the main elements of the resource. I had briefly heard of Move Well Eat Well before, but it was eye-opening having somebody with knowledge and passion taking us through the key points and suggesting to us how to utilize the program.  

I learnt

I learnt that Move Well Eat Well aims to encourage students to drink water, take fruit and vegetables to school, limit unhealthy foods, play often, turn off devices, walk and ride when the opportunity strikes and promote good health (Department of Health and Human Services, n.d). I began to reflect upon my volunteering experience and my time during placement, and I realised that whilst we can ‘control’ the student experiences at school (daily PE, fruit break), it is challenging to influence healthy behaviours at home. I almost feel as though an invisible barrier is being crossed when we approach parents about their child/children bringing water to school instead of cordial and encouraging students to be more active. I think, when faced with this situation, I would foster the development of health literacy and promote a healthy lifestyle through both education (covering these topics in school) and modelling healthy behavior.

Challenged view

I had a different view to the guest speaker about the language used when discussing food. Move Well Eat Well aims to encourage students, parents and schools to limit ‘occasional food’. This is the phrase used on their website and it is the phrase I prefer. It suggests that eating foods containing salt, sugar and fat is okay sometimes. However, the speaker substituted ‘occasional foods’ several times with the terms ‘junk food’ and ‘rubbish’. I don’t think this is particularly helpful or positive for a number of reasons. It implies that it is completely unacceptable, unforgivable or even stupid to be consuming certain food groups. Also, those terms do not describe or explain to students how often they should be eaten. The word ‘occasional’ suggests that foods high in salt, sugar and fat should be eaten occasionally. Junk food and rubbish are not very descriptive or useful.

Figure 1. Ride and Stride Activity

Key moments

Two activities that we engaged in stood out to me.

We were placed into small groups and our job was to address one of the seven focus points of the resource. Our area of focus was Stride and Ride. We had to identify a barrier that a school community may face when it comes to promoting walking or riding to and from school. We believed that road safety was a concern as many local roads do not have bicycle lanes and riding on the footpath can be dangerous for pedestrians and is not always permitted. We developed a possible solution that involves wearing high visibility vests so students, parents and teacher can easily be seen by motorists in poor weather and creating a walking/riding group whereby it becomes the norm to ride to school on certain days. Parents, younger/older siblings and teachers can all commute to and from school on foot or by bike. This is a safe option as there are experienced eyes to make sure the students are safe and it is promoting being active. This stood out to me as I think it can be implemented in many schools around the state and have thought that perhaps I can suggest something similar when I am employed in a school. I consider this to be a useful resource.

Another part of the tutorial was memorable as it involved contributing an idea in front of peers which I find particularly challenging and anxiety inducing. I suggested that instead of rewarding students (for good behavior) with unhealthy or unproductive rewards, teachers should reward them with healthy alternatives. For example, instead of receiving a lolly from the canteen, they get a piece of fruit of their choosing. Perhaps instead of getting time to play on the computers, they get to go outside for a ten minute game. I would like to implement this in my future classroom as it could really benefit student health and learning.