The Art of Health Curriculum
The Curriculum
The mission of the Art of Health curriculum is to provide education on the science behind self-care and healthy habits.
The curriculum consists of education in physical/mental health correlation, neuroplasticity and brain function, the impact of sleep, and self-reflection practices. There is an interactive approach to the instruction with many opportunities for students to share their inquiries as the lesson continues. Interwoven within the presentation, research and studies done prior throughout the Missoula community are provided as sources for reliability in the curriculum’s credibility.
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The curriculum starts with discussing the question; what does it mean to be healthy? This is then confirmed as a combined state where mental, physical, emotional, and social states are regarded as “healthy”.
The curriculum then delves into the mental health and physical correlation and factors that influence each section. By explaining the specific factors and explaining specific behaviors, the students have been reported to exhibit self-reflective thoughts.
We then discuss the research and data collection done prior to the creation of the curriculum. This gives the students, especially of younger ages, a more complete perspective of the importance in developing good behaviors, as well as perspectives of peoples of different demographics on the same topic.
The next subject is the logistics of the behaviors we previously discussed in the form of brain function and neuroplasticity. This is explained briefly, but accompanied with the connection of cell phone use, and examples of neuroplasticity within seconds
Lastly in the discussion, we discuss how to develop good habits. Especially as middle schoolers about to enter highschool, it is existentially important for the development of beneficial habits before they have the greater levels of stress given by higher education.
After the interactive lecture has finished, a self-reflective art activity is initiated. Consisting of different steps to discuss different aspects of self reflection, a personalized, multi-media artwork is developed by each student.
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The instructions projected and described to the class is as following;
Step One - choose a piece of paper and on the back write your name and if I you can would allow your activity to be put on website
Step Two - use the magazines to collage a background(house, patter, landscape, people, etc.)
Step Three - draw with colored pencils/markers your favorite part of yourself (hairstyle, eyes, earrings, outfit, jewelry, music taste, etc)
Step Four - Paint an object/animal that represents your vibe (cat, dog, flower, car, rainbow, etc)
Step Five - write a compliment (“Your style is really cool”, “I like your shoes”, “You always make me smile”, etc)
Data and Analysis
Both tables display the correlations between the recorded data from the students. The pre-class data table shows strong positive correlations between their self-image and eating regular meals (+0.378), worrying about other people’s opinions and hearing others talk badly about themselves (+0.301), and lastly, sleeping 8 hours regularly and eating regular meals (+3.61). The post-class data table has an overall stronger correlation because of a mean average of higher numbers than the pre-class data. The correlations worth mentioning are as follows: understanding the importance of sleep (+0.490), developing healthy habits with developing a routine (+0.619), understanding the importance of sleep (+0.493), and spreading positivity (+0.559), as well as knowing how to self reflect with a positive self-image (+0.488) and developing healthy habits (+0.537). The correlation tables show us how different behaviors/thought patterns affect other actions. For example, we know that before the class those who hear others talk badly about themselves are more likely to worry about others’ opinions, while after the class those who know how to self-reflect (disregard others’ opinions) are much more likely to have a positive self-image.
These data collections tell us that the curriculum is effective in giving an understanding of sleep, awareness of self-image in peers, recognition of positive and negative thought patterns, and implementing the development of healthy habits (within the 8th-grade demographic). It also informs us that in order to make a change in the self-image of students, further education and intervention are necessary.
What’s Next?
Now that we have seen how effective the curriculum has been in the essential issues, a second round of curriculum to specifically target positive self-image and routine development will be implemented in Spring/Fall 2023.