To Boost Learning, Start With Emotional Health

Ask any teacher to identify these students: The child who should be focusing on a math lesson, but instead is wondering whether her parents will fight again tonight, with words and hands - the student with chronic asthma who routinely misses school and whose grades suffer as a result or the group of friends who cannot play outside because it is not safe in their neighborhood.

Braden notes that these issues are becoming more pronounced in the US as the economy worsens and schools bear the brunt of the impacts

In response to this some schools are entering into promising partnerships to address students' physical and emotional health even as educators focus on teaching and learning.

It can be tempting to think that health and education are separate issues, given that these two systems often exist in silos. But evidence has shown that when it comes to the success of our children, both are equally important. Much has been documented about the impact of poverty and how it affects children's ability to learn. Findings from the California Healthy Students Research Project released earlier this year noted that academic success isn't just about instruction: It's about safe campuses, good nutrition, and mental and physical health. The health community knows that children's health begins not in a doctor's office, but where they live, learn, and play.

Often masked are emotional-health factors that play an essential role in a student's success-these conditions are not as easy to spot as physical ailments like chronic asthma or malnutrition. Issues like a student's ability to feel safe, resolve conflicts, self-regulate impulses, and trust adults all have a relationship with attendance and disciplinary problems, which in turn affect academic outcomes.

Some innovations referred to in this article include:

• Investing in supported recess by partnering with a nonprofit.., which supports a full-time, trained staff person to help kids play new and classic games, teach them to resolve conflicts safely, and encourage healthy physical activity at recess and throughout the school day.
• Establishing schools based health support services thereby exposing students to caring adults who can help them solve problems in healthy ways.

Schools cannot be expected to deal with these issues on their own, but it will take leadership from schools to make partnerships like these a priority.

Read more: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/12/07/13lowe_ep.h31.html?tkn=LRZFuSRW56ZbINoNeiNN6ZmkxTIQTb%2BJ8cjI&cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS1