Teachers as health educators

August 20, 2018 Educator's Corner Opinion

The primary goal of education is to help learners gain knowledge and skills; It is also embedded in our Dep- Ed Vision that we should prepare learners with the skills and knowledge to be competent and to reach their full potential and contribute meaningfully to building the nation. However, I believe that a learner, to contribute profoundly to building our nation, should be mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially and physically healthy. These aspects of wellbeing of course are equally important, however, I would like to focus more on physical health because I believe there is more than to just to be healthy. Health should not also be ignored because good education coupled with a healthy mind and body can contribute much to the community.
And since education is one of the key filtering mechanism that situate learners and an individual and it is a driving force to our community, it is the best position to insinuate the importance of health and wellness.
Health education should be one of the priorities of school and community leaders. They should adopt a comprehensive health programs , such as promoting healthy eating through feeding programs, modeling of healthy eating during recess, (supervised recess and lunch so that we could monitor the snacks and lunch of pupils), integration of health in the curriculum of any subjects for example, math lessons could examine sodium intake or reading lessons could use literatures related to health, in Physical Education, we can teach them with appropriate game and exercises that boost physical mental, emotional and social health.
School policies like canteen and stores nearby school should serve healthy, well-balanced meals, school personnel acting as role models for healthy eating and maintaining Gulalyan sa Paaralan that not only provide vegetable gardens but to serve as food basket and as a source of commodities to sustain supplementary feeding as a way of demonstrating organic gardening, regular deworming activities, provisions of safe drinking water, providing clean and safe comfort rooms, should also embraced that will contribute to good health and nutrition for learners.
In conclusion, discussing timely the impact of Health Education and School Health practices, I hope policy makers, school leaders and especially teachers who are a part of public health workforce contemplates to continuously implement the health educations as well as school health programs and policies that will increase opportunities advancing health education and wellbeing of our pupils who are the hope of our fatherland. CAROLYN C. DECOY, Lagan Elementary School / Lagan, Sabangan, Mt. Province