Developing a Healthy School Community – an ASCD pilot project.
ASCD’s vision of an integrated, collaborative effort between schools and their respective communities to improve student health and thus student academic learning is the cornerstone of the study: “Developing a Healthy School Community”. In 2006, ASCD selected 11 schools out of 300 applicants to embark on a pilot project for each to develop a healthy school community. Of those 11 schools, 3 were chosen from Canada – Queen Elizabeth Secondary and Woodland Park Elementary from Surrey BC, and Iroquois Ridge High from Oakland, ON. The remaining schools and districts were selected from across the United States.
Developing a healthy school community involves the engagement of all stakeholders in a coordinated manner to promote the health of students. This approach goes beyond the efforts of schools acting as isolated entities trying to “teach” health, and recognizes the critical role of community stakeholders as partners in health promotion. The collaboration of students, staff, administrators, health professionals, parents and community services, allows healthy school communities to address a particular symptom by examining its cause and coordinating with other community services to offer support. For Queen Elizabeth Secondary, one such coordination has resulted in the partnering with Surrey Parks and Recreation.
There is a national drive to improve the overall health of students. By recognizing that today’s students are also tomorrow’s citizens and community leaders, healthy school communities play an integral part in improving health in the short term and through their community partnerships, foster life-long health and wellness.
Pepi Kotsalis
Queen Elizabeth Secondary
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