I’ve spent nearly 20 years helping teachers make the switch to skills-based health education.
While I was specifically hired at my first job to teach skills-based health, I didn’t really know how. Most of my undergraduate studies were focused on health content. Like most, I was not given a curriculum or even a text-book to follow, so I worked tirelessly to create lessons of my own. But despite my best efforts, my curriculum was often about knowing the ins and outs of diseases, the classification of drugs, and the purpose of each micro- and macronutrient. Students set a goal, tried a decision making model and practiced communicating well but these lessons were rarely received well by my students. I wasn’t really teaching about health, I was teaching my students how to avoid dying.
In my second job…
I was lucky enough to partner with an equally motivated teacher, and to have a super supportive administrator that helped us find relevant professional development. Together we built a skills-based health program from the ground-up. We were often the last two cars in the parking lot, but it was worth it. Our lessons were all about how to live. The skills and the students were the focal point of our lessons, and the content, now whittled down to just the essentials, was taught in the context of those skills. Within a year, we were presenting at conferences and sharing our experiences with teachers who were starving for lessons that would actually work.
I didn’t think I could love anything more than teaching health, until I started my family. While raising my two children, I continued to build curriculum and present at conferences. When I returned to work, I found myself in a small district, working on my own to teach students from grade 8 through grade 12. It was here, that I began to create a sequential curriculum, and realized how lucky I had been in my previous position. With no partner to work with and much less time on my hands, it became clear how difficult the process could be. Determined to make it work, I built a skills-based curriculum that worked for a whole different set of students.
And then the unthinkable happened…a global pandemic upended our lives.
I spent a year home with my own two young children who were attending school virtually and I started Health At School. I knew how difficult it was to transition to skills-based health, particularly when you didn’t have access to professional development, were working alone and had multiple grade levels to teach. I wanted to help other health teachers make the switch without the struggle. Every lesson I created was one I had personally tested (and tweaked) to ensure that it met the standards and worked in a real classroom.
When I returned to teaching in the fall of 2021, I jumped back in fully equipped with lessons that worked. While I’m still adjusting to the return to normalcy (how do we have a sport or activity every night), I do have time to spend with my family. I have time to eat dinner with them every night and to exercise. I have time at work to get grading done because I’m not constantly using all of my prep time to research and plan lessons. And I have a curriculum that has allowed me to build relationships with my students and their families; one that I’m eager to share with the school board and with you.
…to weed through all of the available resources to find the ones that will work for your students in your classroom
…to attend relevant professional development that is far too hard to find and more expensive than you can afford
…to design a quality curriculum from scratch with any time leftover for your family & your needs
That’s why I created 5 Steps To Transition To a Skills Based Health Program. To help you be the best teacher you can be with time leftover to be your best self.
You can make the switch without the struggle.
The biggest difference between those who make the transition to skills-based health and those who don’t is the willingness to try. Shifting to a skills-based mindset, means being willing to let go of content that isn’t essential. Once you start, I promise, you won’t look back.
5 Steps to Transition to a Skills-Based Health Program
All you have to do is sign up, follow the steps, and commit to the journey. I’ll share my tips, tricks and even hook you up with some additional resources.
Enter your name and email and I’ll send
The 5 Steps to Transition to a Skills-Based Health Program
straight to your inbox!