Healthy Schools

HEALTHY MINDS, HEALTHY SCHOOLS is a universal, curriculum-based program for elementary school children aimed at improving children’s social, emotional, behavioural, and academic functioning.Dr. Tina C. Montreuil and Micah A. Tilley’s unique program integrates components of emotion regulation, mindfulness, and metacognition, providing children with practical strategies they can use in everyday life. Comprised of 16 lessons, Healthy Minds, Healthy Schools provides students at the elementary level with practical, everyday strategies to combat stress, anxiety, and depression, and demonstrates the universal need for policy-oriented approaches to school-based mental health. A number of components are integrated throughout, including emotional regulation and expression; mindfulness and metacognition; the link between thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations; acceptance and selfcompassion; goal-directed behaviours; problem solving; and conflict resolution. With guided instructions, personal reflection sections, and group activity exercises, this essential resource equips children with tools to develop improved attention, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility, strengthen their social skills, and enhance their academic performance. This highly colourful and graphically appealing book includes both strategies and activities adapted for children in elementary school. It is an invaluable resource, offering teachers, educators, and other specialists, such as psychologists, counsellors, and social workers, supportive material to teach these valuable social–emotional skills.

What would a school look like if it was designed with mental health in mind? Too many public schools look and feel like prisons, designed out of fear of vandalism and truancy. But we know that nurturing environments are better for learning. Access to nature, big classroom windows, and open campuses consistently reduce stress, anxiety, disorderly conduct, and crime, and improve academic performance. Backed by decades of research, Schools That Heal showcases clear and compelling ways--from furniture to classroom improvements to whole campus renovations--to make supportive learning environments for our children and teenagers. With invaluable advice for school administrators, public health experts, teachers, and parents Schools That Heal is a call to action and a practical resource to create nurturing and inspiring schools for all children.

A hands-on resource for practitioners, this book provides step-by-step guidance for developing a comprehensive school safety plan. Moving from needs assessment to implementation and evaluation, chapters describe research-based strategies that are readily applicable in K-12 settings. Special features include reproducible checklists and other planning tools. Described are proven ways to: create a low-crime environment, identify and support high-risk students, reduce bullying and harassment, improve the schoolwide disciplinary system, and draw on community resources for change.

Schools are unique places. They pay a central role in the formation of young people. The importance of how young people are educated and how they are encouraged to live and learn cannot be underestimated. This book advocates for the fostering of agency not only amongst school personnel but also amongst younger generations for health and sustainability. It provides the reader with a new lens with which to discover health promoting schools and education for sustainable development. It invites the reader to look more deeply into both and to accompany the authors on a journey of discovery of the real potential for each to enhance the practice of schooling.

This book is the perfect starting point for anyone looking to promote and encourage mental health in their school, or evaluate their existing provision, in line with current government priorities. It covers not only the day-to-day practical steps you can take to meet the mental health needs of learners, but also a provides a whole bank of ideas for ensuring you adopt a whole-school approach to positive mental health. Pooky Knightsmith lays out tried and tested tools you can use to evaluate the overall mental health of a school, showing how to improve and support the mental health of staff, and how to ensure that the voice of every learner is heard and valued, including the most vulnerable - and that everyone involved with the school feels safe, healthy and happy. Pooky's simple 'litmus test' framework lays out six practical areas you can explore to implement change within your own school, with explanations, sheets to fill in, tips from loads of school staff, and case examples that break these ideas down into easily digestible chunks. This much-needed book is a jumping off point for meaningful change in all aspects of your school community that will promote, support and strengthen mental health at whole-school level.

With childhood obesity hitting alarmingly high levels and given high profile in the media today, this book looks at what schools could and should be doing to tackle the problem. Research has shown there is a link between weight, lifestyle and attainment. This book will identify ideas and strategies for all primary schools to help educate children and parents about obesity. The book aims to help teachers introduce good eating habits, help children and parents understand the importance of healthy balanced meals, examine how physical activity contributes to weight loss and its maintenance, as well as providing teachers with a list of useful contacts for outside professional support.