A great teacher makes a difference in each child's life, and affects each family and the future of us all.-Barbara Cage
The thing that inspires and excites me most about my advocacy plan and being an advocate is the chance to be a positive influence in the lives of children and families. My topic of childhood obesity is an important topic because it effects the lives of children and families greatly. It is exciting to be able to help educate children and families on the importance of eating healthy and getting regular exercise to help fight childhood obesity. It will help children and their families to have a healthier future when they adopt a healthy lifestyle.
I do have some challenges because I know it is not easy to change lifestyles overnight. My short term goal is to educate the children and families that enter our program to choose healthy foods and exercise by modeling a healthy routine during the school hours, but also encouraging parents the benefits of sticking to healthy food choices and exercise at home as well. The anxieties are also when they leave our program will they be encouraged to continue a healthy lifestyle. The schools in our community have a different set of rules that govern them than from Head Start standards. Some schools in our community do not offer healthy lunches and allow students to go through the lunch line more than once. According to some parents, some teachers offer candy as rewards. Also, some schools have cut down physical education to once a week for twenty minutes.
I feel that it will help me overcome these emotions by encouraging parents to stay informed and have a voice in their child's school. Parents should be helped with resources and materials to help them stay informed about the benefits of their whole family adopting healthy eating habits along with physical exercise to help fight childhood obesity.
I would like to encourage others to stay informed and educated about the issues that they would like to advocate. Having facts to share with parents and leaders will help you fight for your cause. I know that everyone is doing that after reading the different post. It seems as if we have some of the best advocates for children in our class. I have gained valuable insights about being professional and staying informed. I wish everyone the best in their efforts to help children and their families.
I would welcome any advise on my advocacy plan. I would love to hear from anyone on how to help educate parents and leaders about the important issue of early childhood obesity. This is a problem that effects one out of every three children and I would love to be an advocate to help children and their families to have strategies to help fight this problem in their own lives. Thanks in advance for any help in this matter.
To be an advocate in childhood obesity is a very challenging effort. When you see how busy the lifestyles get, and the families bring in breakfast that is from burger king, and other fast food that can be brought in during lunch time. You know parents are just too busy to even think about childhood obesity.
ReplyDeleteObesity may not be something that happens automatically in preschool; but these contributing foods in childhood contribute to their preteen and older years. May not show immediate signs right away, I think if you find the information on contributing factors to teens and preteen obesity, you may be able to persuade some families to change the habits. Some parents may have other older children that they could change the style of the eating little by little.
I think also that if you get a collection of either staff or parent recipes that would be easy for families to make that would be lower sodium and lower calorie recipes, it may help families with busy lifestyles accommodate not only their child’s need but their own needs too.
Good luck! I hope this information might help a little.
Darlene Tschopp
Hi Amy, It took me some time last night but I thought of another resource for you. I was looking up obesity and Michelle Obama our first lady I found her website lets Move.
Deletehttp://www.letsmove.gov/
It might help you too. hit the link. She is all for our children getting getting proper nutrition and keeping obesity out of our young.
Darlene Tschopp
Obesity is a very good advocacy because we have a lot of overweight children due to all the fast foods parents give their children. I believe you could reach some parents if you gave them some recipes that are healthy, quick and easy to make. Because most parents give their children fast foods because they don't have the time to cook a meal that is going to take two to three hours to get done.
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