Any school community can work toward the Healthy School Communities vision set out by ASCD.
Schools and communities come together around this vision for a variety of reasons:
- They recognize that children come to school with many needs that affect their ability to learn.
- They want to provide the best possible environment in which high-quality learning and teaching occur.
- They recognize that schools are a part of the larger community, that the systems are interconnected, and that an environmental approach makes sense to address their students' needs.
Whatever the reason your school and community decide to come together, successful healthy school communities begin with two basic, interconnected steps:
- Gathering support
- Raising awareness
Our experience with school community partnerships makes it clear that multiple champions are needed in order to sustain the partnerships over time.
At the school level, the principal is key to providing the necessary support for the work on which you are about to embark. Research shows a clear link between success and the level of support from the principal. In some circumstances, the principal may chair the team focusing on this work; however, the most effective and successful teams include a representative from the principal's office who has the authority to make decisions and gain support from other school personnel.
Other champions should come from family representative groups (PTA/PTO), community leaders (a school board, a local business), and the student body.
Finally, your champions must get support from among their constituencies.
Raising Awareness about the issues includes
- Discussing the Healthy School Communities vision with staff, parents, the community, and students.
- Doing your homework to learn about the links between health and learning (see "A Case for School Connectedness").
- Ensuring that your school health or wellness team, if you have one, is engaged in the work. Healthy School Communities teams have a broader focus than many local wellness teams, but they have the experience of working together to address student and staff well-being. They can have frank discussions about how the wellness team's objectives intersect with the Healthy School Communities vision.
- Talking about the goals of education in your community. The Healthy School Communities vision supports districts' goals. The vision supports a whole child approach to education.
- Holding community meetings to discuss the vision.
Take the time you need to carry out these steps. If you rush the process, you may not get the depth of support that you will need over time. Remember, your stakeholders will not want to meet without some idea of what the next steps in the process will be.
After schools and communities determine that they want to come together to become healthier, the next step is to assess which of the qualities of a healthy school community they already have in place and which qualities either don't exist or need improvement.
We'll continue to discuss the process for becoming a healthy school community on this Web site, and your school community will be able to follow along with the process used by the school communities in our pilot project. We will also open up opportunities for your school community to network with others doing similar work.