What Is a Healthy School? A healthy school environment is a key to physical and mental health and positively affects students, schools, and the community. Creating a healthy school means so much more than just offering healthy lunches at the cafeteria. A healthy learning environment is crucial to a child’s overall health and well-being. To ensure the health of our students, the school community must focus on the many health aspects of the physical learning environment, as well as a comprehensive school health services program. Students should have access to learn about the many different resources, information, opportunities, and programs available to help support students get healthier.
What Are the Core Elements of a Healthy School Community?
The classrooms and schools have become crucial resources for providing information and education for families. For many students, a classroom is a safe place for learning about health. They may not receive health information at home or may not have high-quality, healthy food to eat, but overall, school health can be achieved through a comprehensive school health policy.
School Health
The key elements of a healthy school culture include comprehensive health services. These services provide access to community healthcare, physical activity, and healthy food. In addition, clean water and education about the importance of clean air are also a crucial part. In a school with health as a key focus, students have opportunities to learn about health and how nutrition. Students understand how physical activity opportunities can improve student health and school health.
Proper disease control and prevention are also an important part of healthy schools. In a healthy school, students learn through education and example. Wellness can become not just a goal but an actuality. They learn how valuable healthy schools are, the benefits of hard work, overall wellness, a clean and healthy environment, physical activity, and that people should value making healthy choices.
Physical Activity
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), students with good health and a healthy environment can focus in class, attend school more frequently, work more effectively in class, and develop into healthier people throughout their lives. Physical activity and movement have also been shown to benefit physical health and strength, brain health, and disease reduction. The school environment is often the only exposure students receive to wellness education and can participate in physical activity.
Physical activity, whether in an organized physical education class, on a playground, or during an after-school sport, can benefit students in both physical and mental ways. School activities that involve motion can have a positive effect on neurocognitive functions. This can help to control impulsive behavior both in and out of the classroom. Besides, vigorous activities can positively affect eating, which is also often controlled by impulses.