Competency 10: Collaboration
Description of Competency:
A health and fitness teacher fosters relationships with colleagues, parents/guardians, and community agencies to support educational growth and well-being.
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Reflection Connection:
This assignment exemplifies the importance of collaborating with parents to create the most effective lifelong fitness program. One of the case studies mentioned in the assignment looked at creating an after school program that had more of a “wrap around” service for parents to help implement healthy habits instead of programs that were solely at school during class. The results of the one study, “A School and Home-Based Intervention…” show that when parents and guardians are included in the educational process at home, there is an increase of physical activity and healthy eating only when those parents and guardians understand the importance for their child. Parents enjoyed the parent meetings with teachers to stay current on their child’s physical and mental health and wanted the program to extend beyond the deadline with additional parent meetings. In the end, when parents were involved in their child’s education, they showed more positive results in both physical activity and healthy eating.
In another study, the researchers examined outdoor science exploration to get students exposure to real-life situations in their community. In particular, lack of experiences and opportunities for science in earlier grades occur in predominantly low income and racial/ethnically diverse communities. The reported stress levels in these communities is higher than in other areas, while being outside has proven to lower stress levels by a marked margin. “Explore Outdoor” science toolkits were provided to the study community to focus on completing science exploration outside of school, which helped increase students’ understanding of science concepts at a younger age. The results of all of these studies reveal that when parents are involved stakeholders in their childrens’ education, students perform better and the educational outlook is more positive overall.