Bay Area
Regional Award Winner
Regional Award Winner
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San Martin Gwinn Elementary submitted the following three essays for consideration of the Governor's Challenge Competition Grand Prize: Essay 1 - Commitment to Promoting Healthy Eating on Campus With many students from a low socio-economic background, in recent years much publicized as being a ‘fast food’ culture, SMG has accepted the challenge of teaching our students to make consistently healthy food choices. Healthy eating is a new life habit at SMG. The past three years SMG students engaged in periodic homework titled ‘5–A – Day Fruits and Vegetables’ where they track their daily servings of fruits and vegetables with a goal of eating five servings a day. We upped this to monthly calendars that students track their exercise and healthy eating choices including how much water they drink. As principal I hear the positive results from parents who now tell me their students are making them buy healthy food at the store. I walk around school and kids show me their healthy snacks. It is great!! And the kids are so excited!! Dedicated support for SMG’s commitment to healthy eating is visible all around school. Morning announcements remind students to eat their 5–a–day serving of fruits and vegetables and to drink their water. SMG teachers have their students keep daily food logs; this is a practice we are expanding next year. The SMG community has planted a garden last year with raised beds for each grade level and fruit trees. We are still getting used to incorporating this into our curriculum, but this year we had homemade salsa and salad. Snack recess has been renamed by students “Healthy Snack” time in our upper grades. Parents now bring healthy mostly snacks for special class functions. As a result, classroom celebrations are dominated by fruit and vegetable platters. Many of the items that would not be considered “healthy are at least organic. This at least keeps preservatives out of our students as much as possible. Water and 100% juice are ‘de rigueur’ for SMG student beverages. Eating Healthy is spreading to our families through our students. At SMG, we are teaching the next generation to eat healthy and live strong. Essay 2 - Support of Students’ Physical Activity and Fitness SMG believes in exercising the body as well as the brain. Teaching students that physical activity is important to living a healthy life and giving students ample opportunity to be active during school help SMG students develop the mindset that exercise is a good thing! Students have many minutes of recess each day to engage in physical activity. Soccer, basketball, tag, tetherball, football, swinging on the play structure, and numerous invented games are activities SMG students play everyday. Annually, a ‘Jump Rope for Heart’ event is held at SMG. All students participate and jump rope at the same time. Our Talent Show has numerous students whose “talent” is some form of jump roping. SMG’s 6th Grade Sports Program gives students opportunities to participate in soccer, volleyball, basketball, and softball throughout the school year. SMG teachers promote physical activity in a variety of ways. Some attend students’ after school sports games. Others help students to create their own games on the playground. The principal even gets involved, much to the student’s delight. He has been seen playing soccer and basketball while wearing his sport coat and carrying a walkie-talkie during recess. Teachers always make equipment available for student use. Open dialogue between students and their families about the value of exercise has been one of the best results of our focus on exercising at SMG. Our teachers make sure that outside of PE we are exercising. Our lower grade “run, walk, jog” is a huge hit with students. Teachers and some of their support staff have taken to walking during their lunch hour. Many of our staff does evening walks together. Creating a healthy environment begins with the staff and we model for our students. SMG staff has accepted that challenge. Essay 3- Need For a New Fitness Center SMG’s demographics reflect those attacked in the press for not making healthy choices and burdening our health care system. Over 50% of SMG students are qualified to receive free and/or reduced meals based on the federal guidelines. A fitness center at SMG will help us continue to change the culture of inactivity that exists in our community. SMG students get their physical activity the old fashioned way, by going outdoors; many SMG students do not, and will not, have access to exercise facilities with high-tech equipment. A fitness center will help cement the positive changes SMG has seen these past few years by allowing SMG students to link, in visible form, the advantages of healthy eating and physical activity while benefiting from quality health education equipment. Exposing SMG students to physical fitness equipment that blends technology concepts and cardio-vascular and strength training will help students see the benefits of exercising and eating healthy as they grow. Use of the fitness center will allow students to stretch and move their large muscle groups each and every day. Student motivation to continue being active will be enhanced through access to equipment many SMG students may never have access to outside of school. An exercise facility on site will serve as an inspiration for our families to become more active. SMG is committed to creating healthy habits in our student population. It takes a community to raise a child. But one student, teacher, and parent at a time can make positive and lasting changes within the community. Given the different cultures and socio-economic backgrounds within the SMG community, a fitness center on campus is an opportunity to teach our students that they each have the power within themselves to live a healthy life! The SMG fitness center will benefit the future of San Martin/Gwinn Elementary School! |
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