Implementing a student health council is an idea designed to incorporate students into the curriculum-creation process and empower them to change what they believe to not work. It is my understanding after having seen these students in action that they have many complaints regarding the system of the facility or school they learn in (including cafeteria and food options), but no recourse besides complaining. Therefore, I believe it is critical to teach them to turn annoying teenage complaining into a concerted effort to organize and reform a system characterized by patterns of industrialism and/or neglect for a curriculum that interests and engages them. I will proceed with plans to discuss a Wellness council with some staff and present the idea to students to see what if they believe a council as such would accomplish for them.
Learning more food preparation skills is critical to young people, who to this point have no food knowledge. During a typical nutrition session if the class is having a conversation about alternatives to the foods they eat, and we have real ideas for what can be an alternative but they have no skills to actually make those dishes then the lesson quickly turns from solution-oriented to problem-oriented. Therefore, it is valuable and engaging for them to have opportunities to learn to prepare those alternative healthy dishes we discuss.
As mentioned before, these students need strategy sessions to learn how to recognize gaffs in the system and work to apply the right kind of pressure to change and reform those gaps. Allowing time for comments on wellness-related problems and solutions, we could work to transform those times of despair to times of empowerment and engagement. One student complains about the food in the cafeteria, okay, well how do you think we should fix that problem? Perhaps sitting down with the people in charge of food policy at the school and discussing the ill affects of the problem and the potential benefits to fixing the problem. Focusing on potential benefits that would also alleviate problems they are looking to solve would be wise strategy. This is what I imagine would help students to become engaged in solution-oriented work (recognizing problems but transcending the initial despair and working to find and implement a solution). Such a mentality is instrumental in raising the standards of residential facilities throughout Pennsylvania.
This wellness council would then be a combination of accruing food preparation skills, reviewing nutrition activities, and wellness strategy sessions. With the goal of empowering students to the point where the council will sustain itself with minimal activity from me, this heightened participation on the part of students will hopefully encourage a new culture of idealism and activism from the students.
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