Improving Activity, Mental Health & Academic Achievement
One health issue that has emerged from the pandemic with particularly high prominence is mental health. Unfortunately, our children have been particularly hard hit.
But when you look back further, per data collected across the country by the CDC, you see that our kids’ mental health has been deteriorating rapidly for more than a decade!
Social media has proved to be particularly toxic for teens.
Yet social media is not going away—kids need to learn to live with it in a more positive way, and avoid the biggest downsides. After all, teens need social connection, and smartphones are one way that is going to happen.
Fortunately, we now have greater recognition of the integral link of mind & body and the importance of improving both physical & mental health.
Just as regular physical activity can lead to rapid improvements in physical health, activity can improve mental health…and cognition & academic achievement, too.
In addition, stress management health education and programs can have a rapid impact on both mental health and academic success.
Daily calming and focus time works and has been demonstrated to be very good for kids. For example, the evidence-based benefits of the Inner Explorer program delivered online to an entire classroom are impressive:
28% Higher Grades in Reading, Maths and Science
43% Decrease in Teacher Stress
15% Increase in Average GPA
60% Decrease in Behavioural Issues
28% Higher Grades in Reading, Maths and Science
43% Decrease in Teacher Stress
15% Increase in Average GPA
60% Decrease in Behavioural Issues
Yes, some schools refer to kids’ mental health as their “social and emotional” health and wellness. They may even use other terms that some people don’t like, such as mental health education or mindfulness.
If you don’t like a certain term or program…don’t use or participate in it! And ask your kids’ school not to use it…or move them to a school whose terminology and approach you prefer.
Healthy Students Healthy State gives schools & parents huge decision-making power, as part of preserving communities’ “local control”…including which programs and terminology they use.
But please don’t just say No! to everything having to do with improving kids’ mental health. Do help kids improve their mental health & wellness—it has a big impact on their quality of life and their success in life…and can become a matter of life or death.
Activity & Nutrition → Academic Achievement
School policies are supposed to be evidence-based. But when it comes to physical & health education and recess, schools are not honoring their own insistence on evidence—and states are not insisting that they do so.
In contrast with widespread school practices today, research in recent decades proves that:
What is more, students with learning disabilities benefit even more than normally developing students in improving the executive function and cognitive skills they need for better academic achievement. Special needs students face so many challenges. Yet by reducing physical activity at school, we have deprived them of a proven way to improve achievement, not to mention their physical and mental health.
The bottom line: schools can invest much more than they are doing in improving students’ success in school and in life, including in their physical and mental health—without sacrificing academic achievement. In many cases, as the research evidence shows (not to mention common sense), achievement will actually improve, even if time is taken back from reading, writing and math instruction.
Healthy Students Healthy States gets us there with broad parental support, while avoiding being “woke” or engaging in “culture wars”.