Most of my time spent with Westwood Middle School this year has been in their cozy conference room getting deep into planning instead of out in classrooms. I did get to observe Royce and Fordyce’s PE class one day, and it was a pretty cool day to pop into PE. Instead of playing basketball or learning the intricacies of archery, they were doing interactive activities to learn etiquette- things like how to introduce themselves or how to politely interrupt a conversation. This is all part of their effort to engage with changes in the health and PE curriculum to encompass physical, mental, and social wellness.
Tuesday, I sat down with the PE dynamic duo of Royce and Fordyce to come up with a plan to re-vamp their approach to their semester-long classes with more student choice, student empowerment, holistic wellness, and project-based principles. They are also continually crafting simulated workplace roles within their gym in order to engage students more fully in the environment.
Under the driving question of “Who am I and who do I want to be in three years?”, students will be deeply analyzing who they are currently based on the fitness gram tracker, which is a state requirement of data collection on physical fitness. Students will set SMART goals for physical, social, and mental health and create action plans for how to pursue those goals. They will use local trainers and wellness coaches to help students understand how they can actively work on their own plans. They will also be gauging and tracking their personal mental, physical, and social health through a quick daily checkin on each using a stoplight color system. They are basing this concept off of the burgeoning practice of bullet journaling to track one’s health and wellness. Once a quarter, students will deeply reflect on the trends reflected in their daily reactions, calculating the percentage of colors represented each month and journaling on the potential factors impacting their wellness.
The products are simple, but they are designed to help students clearly answer those driving questions themselves while also empowering them through the scaffolding to reach their goals. 6th grade students will be writing a letter to themselves as 8th graders examining who they are socially, mentally, and physically as a 6th grader and what they hope they have accomplished by 8th grade. For the 7th graders, in order to encapsulate and encourage the work they are doing on themselves in all of the wellness areas as well as in their core classes, students will hold mock interviews with adults on questions they have addressed throughout their scaffolding, such as their goals and strengths. They will be expected to think and discuss their own goals and what they have done to attain them with these adults in a professional manner. The 8th grade students will write a letter to Westwood Middle School, reflecting how they have grown individually, how Westwood has helped in that growth, and how their experience could have been improved.
I am excited to see how this project progresses and evolves over time. It is a powerful moment in a person’s life when they decide to take control of their own wellness.