Curricula

During the past decade, research has identified a number of curricula that have documented efficacy in reducing use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs as well as other risk-taking behavior among youth. Research-based curricula:

• Are based on sound scientific principles and strategies;
• Present relative and developmentally appropriate information and skills at each grade level;
• Resonate with the cultural values of students in relation to age, ethnicity, community situation, etc.;
• Address the context in which students are likely to encounter drugs, conflicts or decisions regarding sexual activity;
• Are taught by educators well trained in the curriculum;
• Are based on behavioral or cognitive-behavioral principles, such as modeling, behavioral and cognitive rehearsal, goal setting, coaching and feedback;
• Provide opportunities for practice and rehearsal of skills in realistic situations.

To view our calendar of upcoming trainings, please click here. To learn more about these curricula or to request training, please contact us at info@healthandlearning.org. An asterisk (*) indicates that the curriculum’s effectiveness has been validated by scientific research.

Training Available in the Following Curricula

A World of Difference*

The Anti-Defamation League’s A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE Institute is a comprehensive anti-bias training program for teachers, administrators and students. Each training for educators is designed to raise participants’ awareness of personal and institutional biases and their impact on school climate. The training aims to provide participants with the opportunity to develop proactive strategies to challenge racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, classism and all other forms of prejudice and bigotry as well as to foster safer and more inclusive learning environments.

The Peer Training Program empowers middle and High School youth to promote positive social change in their schools and communities by facilitating greater inter-group dialogue, understanding and respect.

Class Action

In this workshop, teachers and administrators learn how poverty and classism impact student learning and achievement. Explore cultural barriers, “hidden rules,” teaching for resiliency, impact of generational poverty, and biases both ways. Learn strategies for helping low-income students to succeed in the classroom and beyond.

Defusing Media Impact

Media shapes our culture and promotes risk-taking behaviors as glamorous lifestyles. Learn ways to teach students how to maintain their authenticity as they navigate in our culture that is heavily saturated with media. Media can affect brain development in children, body image issues, issues of violence and fearfulness, substance abuse, bias and nutrition. One or two-day training is available for teachers, students, school staff, or parents. Classroom or community presentations may include planning for activism.

Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs (ATOD) Education

Make your school a safer, healthier place for learning. This workshop focuses on current pharmacology, legal issues, development of school drug policy, referrals, distinguishing between chemical use, misuse and dependence; HIV-AIDS; peer education; chemical dependency and the family; deconstructing media; asset development and more. Center for Health and Learning offers several professional development options for this training. This training is ideal for school staff and teachers to attend together. This training fulfills requirements under Vermont’s Act 51. Learn more about VT Act 51 by clicking here.

Great Body Shop*

The Great Body Shop is a nationally recognized comprehensive health and substance abuse prevention program developed by Children’s Health Market. It is used by preschool, elementary and middle schools throughout the US. The program meets all state and national standards, is affordable, easy to teach, and provides an educational environment in which it is enjoyable to learn. Combining current research from the fields of substance abuse and violence prevention, educational psychology, neuroscience and human behavior, the program synthesizes accurate, developmentally appropriate content with effective instructional processes.

The Great Body Shop also provides a fully articulated cross-curricular approach for school districts that require additional concentration in one or more of the following specific areas:

• Substance Abuse Prevention
• Social and Emotional Health
• Character Education
• Violence Prevention (including bullying)
• Critical Thinking
• Asset Building
• Reading, Communication, Technology and other Learning Skills

Healing Expressive Arts Loss Support (H.E.A.L.S.)

The Healing Expressive Arts Loss Support (HEALS) is an expressive arts curriculum for children who are experiencing loss or a difficult life transition. During this training, you will learn how to help children build skills in emotional and social literacy by using the expressive arts (movement, story-telling, writing, visualizations, drawing, clay-work etc.). The accompanying curriculum, entitled, The Art of Healing Childhood Loss was designed specifically for school-based settings and comes loaded with practical activities that can be applied to large groups or a single child.

Health Teacher and HealthTeacher.com

Attend a training in Health Teacher and receive staff development in standards and skills-based health education, performance assessment, practical lessons and teaching strategies to use in your classroom, in addition to a one-year subscription for your entire school to HealthTeacher.com (value $150). Many school systems are choosing this cost saving, up-to-date, online curriculum resource for both primary and secondary health education curriculum. The online standards and skills-based curriculum provides 288 lessons for K-12 on all major contemporary health topics that include instructional support and links to state of the art web tools for quick and easy use with students. You will learn how to access the lessons, teacher support, and other online resources as well as leave the training with a one-year subscription to these resources that your colleagues can use.

Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT)

This two-day training prepares classroom health educators to use the HECAT (Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool) to perform a clear, complete, and consistent analysis of health education curricula. Participants assess the comprehensiveness of their curriculum and develop strategies to address gaps. Participants will learn how to analyze and score their curriculum intended to promote sexual health, (including sexual risk-related health problems: teen pregnancy, STD, and HIV), and establish an effective implementation plan. This training prepares participants to use the HECAT to assess other types of school-based health curricula as well.

Know Your Body*

Know Your Body (KYB) is a research-based comprehensive school health education curriculum for grades K-6.

• Successful due to its easy-to-use format, KYB’s content is based on learning theories and contains a built-in evaluation component. It concentrates on skills and behavioral-based activities, and interactive family components.
• All student activities are aligned to the National Health Education Standards.
• Includes modules on conflict resolution, violence prevention and HIV/AIDS prevention.

Life Skills Training*

Life Skills Training (LST) is a research-based tobacco, alcohol, and drug abuse prevention program appropriate for middle school students.

• Demonstrated effectiveness in reducing the incidence of substance abuse by youth.
• Based on social learning and behavior-change theories.
• Hands-on experience with the curriculum is critical in ensuring the fidelity that is required for obtaining research-based results.
• Used throughout Vermont, over 250 educators have already attended a two-day training in LST.

Michigan Model*

In recent years, state agencies started to work together to more effectively reach students and their families with health promotion and disease prevention messages. The model in Michigan is that state agencies work with scores of voluntary and professional groups to share resources, avoid duplication, and provide a single focus for school health curriculum for children.

The Model creates a partnership between parents, schools and communities that supports young people in making health decisions. Teachers receive training, new materials, and ongoing support to teach health. Students gradually develop skills and knowledge in age-appropriate content areas as they proceed from kindergarten through the 12th grade. Students receive key health messages that are introduced, developed, and reinforced at a time when they can understand and use them. Teachers are given access to current research and new teaching ideas to help students learn to make smart choices. Students acquire and reinforce new health skills through hands-on lessons and practice.

The Michigan Model promotes these values:

• Self discipline and cooperation;
• Respect for others and respect for self;
• Respect for property and the environment;
• Respect for laws and school rules;
• Compassion and helpfulness;
• Kindness and non-violent resolution of conflict.

Olweus

The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program is a multilevel, multi-component school-based program designed to prevent or reduce bullying in elementary, middle, and junior high schools (students 6 to 15 years old). The program attempts to restructure the existing school environment to reduce opportunities and rewards for bullying. School staff is largely responsible for introducing and implementing the program. Their efforts are directed toward improving peer relations and making the school a safe and positive place for students to learn and develop. While intervention against bullying is particularly important to reduce the suffering of the victims, it is also highly desirable to counteract these tendencies for the sake of the aggressive student, as bullies are much more likely than other students to expand their antisocial behaviors. Research shows that reducing aggressive, antisocial behavior may also reduce substance use and abuse.

The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program targets students in elementary, middle, and junior high schools. All students participate in most aspects of the program, while students identified as bullying others or as targets of bullying receive additional individual interventions. The main benefits of Olweus include: reduction in existing bullying/victim problems, prevention of development of new cases of bullying and improvement in peer relations at the school.

Pangrazi’s Method of Dynamic Physical Education

Tested and proven by thousands of students, Pangrazi's Method of Dynamic Physical Education guides teachers through the best step-by-step techniques for teaching physical education while navigating through today's challenging educational terrain. Pangrazi’s methods dispel the anxieties many new teachers face by providing the most comprehensive resource for teaching P.E. to elementary school children. This training covers everything from games and activities suitable for every developmental level to teaching strategies and guidelines for every classroom situation. Whether instructors are starting a new program, restructuring an established one, or working with a team in an existing system, this training provides the best combination of theoretical framework and hands-on activities available. The training, accompanied by the 14th edition of Pangrazi’s famous text, Dynamic Physical Education for Elementary School Children, covers current trends, research, and fitness technology, as well as new classroom management techniques and programs for interdisciplinary activities.

The Power of Choice: Helping Youth Make Healthy Eating and Fitness Decisions

The Power of Choice was developed by Health and Human Services’ Food and Drug Administration, and USDA's Food and Nutrition Service. It is intended for after-school program leaders working with young adolescents. This training walks you through the accompanying Leaders’ Guide and helps you access fun after-school activities. Many of the activities are easily transferred into the classroom, too. This training will provide you with quick, simple things to do with kids; many activities take little or no pre-planning. The training covers 10 interactive sessions based on four posters. Included in the Leader's Guide are a recipe booklet, parent letter, and Nutrition Facts cards. The CD contains additional activities, tips for improved communication with adolescents, a training video for the adult leaders, and a song for pre-teens.

Project Northland*

Project Northland is a middle grades program focusing on alcohol use and abuse.

• Emphasis on resistance techniques and decision-making.
• Opportunities for role-playing and includes a well-structured, peer-led component.
• The sixth-grade curriculum is integrated with family take-home assignments.

Puberty: The Wonder Years

This one-day training prepares educators, counselors and nurses to conduct puberty education using the new curriculum: Puberty: The Wonder Years. Participants will understand the state’s requirements for teaching sexuality education, practice setting ground rules, and answering sensitive questions. The training addresses how to strengthen parental involvement and use performance assessment to assess learning.

Reducing the Risk: HIV Prevention*

Reducing the Risk: Building Skills to Prevent Pregnancy, HIV and STD includes 16 well-defined lessons which clearly emphasize teaching refusal statements, delay statements and alternative actions students can use to abstain or protect. Directions for pre-course preparation — obtaining parent permission, establishing ground rules, etc. — are included in the manual. Specific guidelines for class activities, background information for teachers, and complete lecture notes are also included.

At the completion of this curriculum, students will be able to:

• Evaluate the risks and consequences of becoming an adolescent parent or becoming infected with HIV or another STD.
• Recognize that abstaining from sexual activity or using contraception are the only ways to avoid pregnancy, HIV infection and other STD.
• Conclude that factual information about conception and protection is essential for avoiding teenage pregnancy, HIV infection and other STD.
• Demonstrate effective communication skills for remaining abstinent and for avoiding unprotected sexual intercourse.

Second Step

Second Step is a violence prevention curriculum for K-8. Second Step is a universal intervention that is designed to be used with all students in a school. Through use of the Second Step program students begin to raise their self-esteem, rather than their fists.

Second Step teaches skills in empathy, impulse control, problem solving, appropriate social behavior, and anger management. For example, in the unit on empathy, students learn to identify and predict the feelings of others and to provide an appropriate emotional response. In the impulse control unit, students learn problem-solving and communication skills, with a focus on how to handle and solve interpersonal conflict. In the anger management unit, students learn techniques for reducing stress and channeling angry feelings into constructive problem solving. The parent education program focuses on teaching these same skills to parents, as applied to parenting situations.

The Pre/K to grade 5 kits contain photo lessons, complete with discussion guide, teacher notes, activities, and a teacher's guide, which offers a description of each teaching unit, background information, suggestions and resources for handling difficult classroom situations, homework, parent activity sheets, and take-home letters. In addition, the Pre/K kit includes puppets, sing-along tapes, and posters. Grades 1-5 kits include classroom posters and video lessons that accompany each of the units to serve as a model for teachers and students. The grades 6-8 curriculum includes overhead transparencies and "Check It Out," a video focusing on specific behavioral skills. All curriculums are self-contained and easy to implement. The "Family Guide to Second Step" contains videos and a facilitator's guide for a six-session parent education format. Second Step consists of 20 scripted lessons in 45-50 minute formats.

Teenage Health Teaching Modules*

Teenage Health Teaching Modules (THTM) is a successful, nationally used, and independently evaluated comprehensive school health curriculum for grades 6 to 12. It provides adolescents with the knowledge and skills to act in ways that enhance their immediate and long-term health. The evaluation of THTM concluded that the curriculum produced positive effects on students' health knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behaviors. The following essential health skills are highlighted in each of the modules: risk assessment, self-assessment, communication, decision-making, goal setting, health advocacy, and healthy self-management. THTM is comprised of a series of modules, each of which consists of a teacher's guide with a detailed framework for conducting classroom activities and handouts that are designed to be duplicated for student use.

Ask us about others!