Creating a Movement of Movements to Improve Kids’ Well-being [Podcast Series]
[:54] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Taylor Walsh
Taylor Walsh is Founder and Director of WholeHealthED: The Center for Whole Health Learning in K-12.
[1:12] Background and inspiration for founding WholeHealthED
“And that really set the stage for what became WholeHealthED which was the idea of unifying this set of practices, the school garden, the teaching kitchen, time in nature, phys ed and mindfulness as kind of five core elements in a unified whole health learning framework.”
[7:10] Impact of five core elements on health
“The school garden is the perfect metaphor. It's a place of growing kids, managing their own growth. And the whole health learning prospect, Those, five areas share these kind, these attributes, which we believe are very important. One is their collaborative learning step. Kids learn to work together, to trust each other, and to take agency for the projects and everything that they that they undertake. They are hands on. We like to say brains on and hearts on as well.”
[10:45] Implementing a whole health learning pilot
“The program engaged the teachers. I like to use the term, it was kind of a light footprint on the curriculum and on the actual school day to engage the students and the faculty. And at the end of the semester, if I can jump to that point, the outcome was the 21st Century Learning folks did a survey, pre and post survey, which said that, said through each one of these subject areas, kids were engaged, and this was a highly significant experience for them…”
[15:31] Whole health learning as upstream prevention
“One of the reasons I'm on a steering committee of a whole health, whole person health coalition at NIH is to try to make the case that when kids are in these programs, these are about upstream prevention in real time. You can see this in real time, and it's about health promotion. And being able to say to our biomedical research colleagues, who are the best in the world, that it's equally important to keep healthy kids healthy.”
[21:11] Creating a movement of movements
“As you referred to, each one of these practice areas or domains has a movement driving, whether it's mindfulness or time in nature or nutrition and exercise. They are well entrenched, well established movements already. So we need a movement of movements, and that's what the coalition would be intended to try to pull together…”
[26:17] Centering child well-being
“I’’m looking for, what is the description of what the children, the students in school, are going to be doing personally that's going to give them an advantage, improve their health, improve their mental capacity, whatever it is. And you don't see that much. So the whole health learning prospect that says, if you want to deal with upstream prevention, right, let's put kids in a position where that's an outcome of what they're doing.”
