A Skyline Culture of Wellness

A Skyline Culture of Wellness

Our school has a major impact on student wellness, as individual wellness has an impact on our school. As SkyWell works to create and foster a campus-wide culture of wellness, students are becoming aware of many factors that influence the decisions they make about health and wellness. Our school can play a major role in reducing the barriers to wellness and helping to make the healthy choice the easy choice.

We can look to national thought leaders for great dialog about “What is a culture of wellness?” The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is leading the discussion at a national level (@RWJF and www.RWJF.org) and locally, #JoinMe at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, Blue Cross’s @HealthierMI and the www.5HealthyTowns.org initiatives are all excellent resources.

Here at Skyline, more than 70 students recently met to brainstorm issues about wellness at our school.

Their recommendations include:

·         More than increasing healthy food choices in the cafeteria; let’s work together to make healthy choices more affordable, offer healthy vending machine options, and stop selling soda pop at school.

·         More than just increasing our physical activity, let’s promote fun ways to get moving like a walking path outside, open up our fitness facilities and fields to everyone, and host a Field Day for all students.

·         More than just talk about managing personal stress, let’s have a real discussion about the oppressive amount of homework we have and sponsor a “No Home Work Day” each trimester.

·         Let’s spread the word about wellness every day for administrators, teachers and students through student assemblies and a giant billboard with current wellness information.

·         Let’s Make Skyline High School the healthiest high school in Michigan. Skywell – lead the way!

Join the conversation at the monthly SkyWell Club – and at www.A2SkyWell.com