Background: Carpinteria Middle School was a participant in a grant to improve student health and well-being by: 1) Increasing the offerings of fruits and vegetables in the school, 2) Link nutrition education to core academic curriculum, health and physical education classes, and instructional gardens, 3) Offer nutritious, tasty, appealing meals to every student in a positive environment with ample time to eat, and 4) Offer more physical activity opportunities and physical education that meets state recommendations.
Philosophy: “Education is a process of getting your story straight.” -Jack Meyer, grant participant.
At Carpinteria Middle School, we make a simple assumption that all learning, all strategies for problem-solving, and all academic and social skills are based upon the changes in an individual’s collection of stories. When a student learns a new skill, they are simply creating , refining, or adding more detail to their understanding of the story of that skill, whether it is a mathematical skill such as adding fractions, or a life-skill such as choosing a healthy food for a lunch or a snack.
Based upon this assumption, we also believe in the power of conversation: For most students, school is an extended conversation, a transaction between students, parents, teachers, and curriculum. And the truth is that the things we converse about are the things that change.
Strategies: (1) "Keep the conversation going:" We live in a world of information overload. There is too much to know, too little time to reflect upon what we know, and too many people who want to tell us what they know.
Given this, we made every effort to make nutrition and a healthy life-style part of the daily conversation at school. Changes to the cafeteria, curriculum activites in all disciplines, and activities in the larger community all helped to make the interactions rich and to sustain a message.
(2) "Small changes over a long time have big rewards:" We have tried to emphasize the power of a small change. Walking an extra 2000 steps a day counts for 10.5 pounds of weight loss over a year.
(3) The power of "Didja Know:" In its simplist form, Didja know is the Snapple Cap phenomenon. Its what happens when someone reads the fact in the cap on the Snapple and says, Didja know that hummingbird weighs less than a penny. That Snapple cap empowers a person with a piece of information they didn't have before and it is a motivation for action. Have you noticed that when you play "dumb" with your kids, how they brighten up....how willing they are to help you learn. When kids are empowered by the things they have learned, they become models for the things that we really want them to do in the first place.
So Bonnie and I have been exploring curriculum that will allow kids ownership of the information and attitudes that would bring them to a continue a healthy lifestyle: Students research healthy foods on the Internet, they developed internally Websites to educate and promote a fruit or vegetable, they developed mini-movies that presented the preparation of a healthy recipe using still cameras. We are building to stability.
(4) "Activity by design:" (Current interest) Inspired by the "Active Living by Design" organization, we are investigating fundamental changes in school structure. For example, requiring parents to use the drop off area on the far side of campus would cause children to walk an extra 1/4 of a mile a day, or an extra 45 miles a year (see small changes on # 3).
