Wellness Is Your Right: Intersectional Health And Equity For The 21st Century

Description

Only 8% of Boston Public Schools High School students receive the minimum Health Ed requirements. As a result, students lack an in-depth understanding of important topics such as mental & emotional health, STDs, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, food deserts, racism, systemic trauma, and more. In this course, we will explore what living a healthy life means to students and families in our communities. We will create definitions for what wellness means to us. Through that lens, we will address how well our systems can provide the basic human right of wellness and who is left out. Students will then identify an area of interest and create a policy addressing the inequities in healthcare.

State Standards

National Health Education Standards

Comprehending Concepts: Students will comprehend concepts related to health promotion and disease prevention to enhance health.

1.5.1        Describe the relationship between healthy behaviors and personal health.

1.5.2        Identify examples of emotional, intellectual, physical, and social health.

Health Enhancing Behaviors: Students will demonstrate the ability to practice health-enhancing behaviors and avoid or reduce health risks.

7.5.1        Identify responsible personal health behaviors.

7.5.2        Demonstrate a variety of healthy practices and behaviors to maintain or improve personal health.

Social Emotional Competencies

• Self-Awareness
• Self-Management

Supports Available to Students

Tier 1 (Supports provided to ALL students)

• Healthy Relationships & Communications
• Emotional and Mental Health
• Consent & Boundary Setting
• Gender Identity and Expression; Sexual Orientation
• Bullying/Cyberbulling Prevention
• Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (bridging)
• translation
• BPS Transformative SEL Competencies through integration into:
• Academics, focus on Equitable Literacy
• Classroom Climate
  • SEL Practices
  • Movement Breaks
  • Think Spaces
• Strategic Small Groups

Tier 2 (Supports provided to targeted SMALLER groups of students)

• Community building restorative justice circles 
• Small group counseling, such as lunch bunches ( we often each with selected groups, though the specific lunch bunches are done by our social workers though we both help )
• Home visits (rarely)
• Deescalation
• Succeed Boston (on extreme cases)
• Attendance support & interventions (creating check-ins, and supporting SST plans)

Tier 3 (Intensive supports provided to SMALL groups or INDIVIDUAL students)

• Wilson Reading System (pull out)
• Threat and Risk Assessments – as health educators, we are often the first adults students bring risk and traumatic information to
• Family engagement/ partnership to support student
• Restorative Justice Harm Circles
• Crisis response ( in our capacity to recognize and seek help)
• 1:1 or Small Group  
• Orton-Gillingham/Wilson Reading System ( pull out)

Skills-learned

• Read contents of a text file using Python
• Use a Python dictionary data structure to count word frequency
• Use Python to analyze word frequency of a text