What does a fully comprehensive health education curriculum look like?

This week I participated in an interview for the February SHAPE America podcast that was specifically targeted at us! The #healthed community!!

The questions, as always, were posed by the awesome duo behind the podcast – Colin Brooks and Matt Pomeroy and they opened the show with the question mentioned above. Andy Horne, Jeff Bartlett and myself attempted to answer that question, and we suggested that a fully comprehensive curriculum should have the following components:

• It should be taught without intentional bias, is research based, culturally and age appropriate and theory driven.

• It addresses Health Behavior Outcomes. It addresses concepts and skills across a range of topics that allow students to lead a more healthful life which includes not only themselves but those around them – family, friends, school & local community.

• It’s less about facts, and more about increasing knowledge and skills.

• The curriculum should be planned considering student progression from kindergarten through to 12th grade & beyond.

• The curriculum follows state mandates and the relevant state/national standards.

• The curriculum should be taught by fully qualified health educators who are supported with regular professional development.

• It should address the needs of your students.

• It can’t be just a semester of health that is never referred to again. The content should continue across grade levels, ideally with the support of other academic subject areas.

When analyzing your health curriculum consider guidelines suggested by Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Division of Adolescent School Health (DASH), and check out the Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT) document.

FOSE (Future of Sex Education) have a great document entitled ‘The National Teacher Preparation Standards’ that breakdowns the required steps needed to better prepare undergraduate pre-service students to deliver sexuality education.

You can hear more from Andy, Jeff and I in the February podcast which will be released in 3 installments. Other questions that were posed to us included:

• What are the top three goals of your health education curriculum?
• What standards do you use for your health education classes?
• How do you setup your health education classroom for success (classroom management techniques, routines, procedures, etc)
• How can we make health education student centered or learner centered?
• How are you incorporating active learning (making, creating, getting up and discussing, etc)  into your curriculum?
• How are you incorporating technology into your classes?
• What do your health education assessments look like?
• How are you collaborating with other content areas?
• How are you advocating for your health education program?

Our #slowchathealth questions this week will be drawn from the list above. Remember, you can answer each daily question as they are released or you can answer them all at once. Recently the responses from the #healthed community have been awesome so please keep it up – your responses are much appreciated.

Q1 What does a fully comprehensive health education curriculum look like?

Q2 What are the top three goals of your health education curriculum?

Q3 What standards do you use for your health education classes?

Q4 How are you collaborating with other content areas?