Growing Healthy Background

Who originally developed Growing Healthy?
Experienced teachers and curriculum writers developed Growing Healthy with expert input from the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, and other national voluntary health organizations during the late 1960's and early 1970's.

How did the development of Growing Healthy differ from other health education programs and products?
In stressing aspects of health such as personal health habits and values, self-esteem, and decision-making skills, Growing Healthy transcends traditional hygiene and disease-focused approaches to health education, by focusing on building life skills to establish positive health habits and promote lifelong wellness.

What is the role of the National Center for Health Education as it relates to the Growing Healthy program?
NCHE, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, is the developer and demonstrator of the nationally recognized Growing Healthy program. The Growing Healthy copyright held by NCHE, calls for the organization to be solely responsible for the content, program maintenance, technical assistance, and teacher preparedness related to successful implementation.

Growing Healthy Adoption

Where is the Growing Healthy program implemented?
During the past twenty-five years, Growing Healthy has been implemented in 43 of the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada. More than 5 million students in15,000 plus schools have benefited from the curriculum.
Growing Healthy is also widely used on Native American Reserves in the United States and Canada.

What kind of community is successful in implementing the program?
Growing Healthy is implemented in urban, suburban, rural, and migrant populations throughout the nation with public, private, and parochial schools implementing the program successfully.

What is a Growing Healthy Project Facilitator?
NCHE seeks to designate a contact person (Growing Healthy Project Facilitator) to coordinate the efforts of local initiatives. A project facilitator is the liaison between NCHE and a local Growing Healthy program site. That person can be at the state, local, or school level. These individuals are critical links to the daily program and information issues.

Responsibilities of Growing Healthy Project Facilitators may Include:

Keep NCHE apprised of issues that relate to comprehensive school health education at the state and local level.

Advocate for comprehensive school health education.

Promote Growing Healthy.

Collect data regarding Growing Healthy trainings and implementations.

Serve as a liaison between NCHE and Growing Healthy teachers and trainers.

Coordinate technical assistance to teachers.

What funding sources do schools use to implement Growing Healthy?
Schools use federal, state, local, and private funding sources to purchase Growing Healthy. For examples of such funding sources click here

Are peripheral materials necessary to teach the program?
Peripheral materials are integral to the program. The Growing Healthy program is comprised of three major components: the curriculum guide, which includes blackline masters of student worksheets and a glossary, ready-made teaching materials, and peripheral materials such as videos, anatomical models, posters, games, books, and other manipulatives.

Growing Healthy uses a multi-media strategy because students learn in different ways. The program works because it is resource-rich and uses a variety of teaching techniques to capture the imagination and to provoke student learning.

Can I buy just one grade level of Growing Healthy? Can I buy Growing Healthy for an individual classroom?
Growing Healthy has been evaluated and proven effective based on the comprehensive model for school health education. Because Growing Healthy uses a sequential approach in which each lesson and each grade level builds on previous ones, program effectiveness is compromised if one grade level or one classroom at a particular grade level is taught in isolation. The comprehensive school health education model includes specific guidelines prescribing the amount of time for health education at each grade level. Effective programs are monitored and include age appropriate, planned, scientifically accurate, sequential education for K-12 students.

Can I teach Growing Healthy along with other health programs or categorical health topics?
Because Growing Healthy is comprehensive and teaches all content areas at each grade level, K-6, it is not necessary to supplement the program with categorical health programs.

How do I order Growing Healthy?
Growing Healthy must be ordered through NASCO, NCHE's exclusive authorized distributor.
If credit is not established, NASCO will contact the school district purchasing office to establish an account. Send a P.O. (purchase order) from your district purchasing office to:

Internet order: www.eNASCO.com
Email: Custerv@eNASCO.com
Fax order: (920) 563-8296
Telephone order: 1-800-551-3488

Mail order:

NASCO
Attention: Order Department
901 Janesville Avenue
PO Box 901
Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin 53538-0901

Growing Healthy Content

What grade levels does the Growing Healthy program include?
Growing Healthy is a Kindergarten through Grade 6 curriculum.

Has Growing Healthy been revised?
Yes. Growing Healthy is in its third edition, published in 1996. Previous editions include 1986 and 1991 publications.

Will Growing Healthy be revised in the future?
The revision process is now an ongoing one to keep the content and peripheral materials up to date.

How does the third edition differ from the previous ones?
The third edition includes:

nutrition lessons based on the food guide pyramid
activities addressing diversity and gender equity
multi-media materials that reflect multicultural populations and gender equity
assessment activities
violence prevention integration

What are the components of the Growing Healthy program?
The Growing Healthy program includes:

a grade specific curriculum guide inclusive of blackline masters (student worksheets) and a glossary of Growing Healthy vocabulary.
a set of six peripheral kits to share among teachers at the same grade level.
a set of ready-made teaching materials for each teacher.

What distinguishes Growing Healthy from other school health education programs?
Growing Healthy was America's first comprehensive school health program.

Specific Distinctions:

Growing Healthy is proven effective and recognized by a number of institutions and organizations.

Growing Healthy is the only comprehensive health education program for K-6 that requires teacher training.

Growing Healthy is a skills based health education program that teaches those health-related abilities and positive behaviors that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.

Growing Healthy utilizes a multimedia, age-appropriate, hands-on approach to teach K-6 school health.

Growing Healthy incorporates a variety of instructional strategies to teach health, thereby addressing a variety of learning styles.

What is the theoretical basis for the Growing Healthy program?
The Growing Healthy program rests on the premise that if children in K-6 understand how their bodies work, and appreciate a range of factors---biological, social, and environmental---that affect their health, they will be more likely to establish good habits during this formative period.

Growing Healthy is a skills-based program, teaching life skills and positive behaviors that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.

Examples of life skills included in the Growing Healthy curriculum include:

Goal Setting---Decision Making---Creative Thinking---Self Awareness---Empathy---Effective Communication---Coping With Emotions---Problem Solving---Critical Thinking

Is Growing Healthy a comprehensive or a categorical program?
Growing Healthy is a comprehensive health education program as opposed to a single-topic curriculum. A comprehensive program incorporates the ten content areas (as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) at each grade level, beginning in Kindergarten and continuing through Grade Six.

Content areas taught at each grade level:

Growth & Development
Mental & Emotional Health
Personal Health
Family Life & Health
Safety & First Aid
Disease Prevention & Control
Consumer Health
Nutrition
Substance Use & Abuse
Community & Environmental Health

Has the Growing Healthy program been evaluated?
Yes, Growing Healthy has undergone a number of evaluations since its development.

In a major national study considered the "Gold Standard" for research on the impact of school health education, Growing Healthy students demonstrated the strongest, statistically significant effects on overall measures of health knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. (School Health Education Evaluation, 1985)

Who says the Growing Healthy program is effective?
Growing Healthy's proven effectiveness is recognized by a number of publications, institutions, and organizations. Among others, the list includes:

Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
Applying Effective Strategies (U. S. Department of Education)
Years of Promise: A Comprehensive Learning Strategy for America's Children (Carnegie Corporation of New York)
Making the Grade (Drug Strategies, Inc.)
President's Report on School Safety (U.S. Department of Education & U.S. Department of Justice)

How many lessons are taught at each grade level in the Growing Healthy program?
At each grade level, K-6, approximately 42-53 lessons are introduced. Research indicates that in order to impact knowledge, attitudes, and behavior, students must be exposed to repeated, sequential, and developmentally appropriate messages in order to prevent the behaviors that lead to health risks.

Growing Healthy is a catalyst for education reform because it excites teachers, engages students, and involves parents; and mobilizes and utilizes community resources to impact the health and well-being of students.

Does Growing Healthy incorporate a multicultural approach in the teaching of health? Is Growing Healthy multicultural?
The Growing Healthy curriculum addresses multiculturalism in a variety of ways including:

Recognition of a variety of health belief systems
Ancillary materials that include children and role models of many ethnicities
Lessons that address multicultural perspectives and introduce role-play, discussion, and activities that give students the opportunity to analyze different perspectives

Does Growing Healthy meet the National Health Education Standards?
Growing Healthy meets and exceeds each of the seven standards as well as the performance objectives at every grade level. These standards were developed and published by the Joint Committee on National Health Education Standards.

What other content area standards does Growing Healthy meet in addition to health?
Growing Healthy has been aligned with National Standards in several disciplines:

National Health Education Standards
Primary Literacy Standards
Standards for the English Language Arts
Standards for Social Studies
National Science Education Standards

Is Growing Healthy available in languages other than English?
Growing Healthy is currently only available in English, but the National Center for Health Education is open to translating or adapting the program to meet the needs of diverse populations.

How can Growing Healthy be integrated into the overcrowded list of other content areas like math, language arts, and science?
Growing Healthy is easily integrated into other content areas because the program includes interdisciplinary activities and teaching strategies that overlap with science, reading, social studies, art, the language arts, and other disciplines.

Does Growing Healthy incorporate parent involvement activities and initiatives?
The Growing Healthy program offers many opportunities for parents to be involved in the health education of their children, as well as opportunities to be educated themselves. The program is designed to encourage the family to establish and maintain positive health behaviors.

Does the Growing Healthy program address issues of gender and racial bias?
The Growing Healthy program seeks to reduce and eliminate gender and racial bias. Peripheral materials are selected that exclude stereotypes, acknowledge all kinds of families, weigh relationships between people, and depict all people in a positive context. Videos, books and stories about women and girls are selected based on their initiative, intelligence, and achievements, as opposed to looks or relationships with boys.

Growing Healthy lessons include the teaching and practice of life skills that prepare students of either gender or any ethnicity to resist racist and sexist attitudes.

What types of assessment tools are provided in Growing Healthy?
Assessment allows the teacher to monitor progress and to identify student understanding over time. A variety of assessment tools are used in Growing Healthy including portfolios, self appraisal, teacher observation, hands on activities, and demonstrations of knowledge, skills, and behavior that gauges student progress toward adopting and maintaining good health practices.

Does Growing Healthy meet the health education needs and requirements of developmentally disabled students?
Teachers use Growing Healthy to meet the needs of the developmentally disabled because the variety of experiential lessons, activities and peripheral materials adapt to a range of learning styles and abilities. During Growing Healthy teacher training, teachers learn to adapt the program to meet individual classroom needs.

Teacher Training

How do teachers prepare to teach Growing Healthy?
All classroom teachers who implement Growing Healthy must be trained to teach the program. Growing Healthy is the only proven effective comprehensive school health program that mandates pre-implementation teacher training.

Please contact Ray Marks at ray@nche.org or at 212-463-4053 for more information about Teacher Training.

What are the objectives of teacher training?
At the conclusion of the Growing Healthy training, teachers will have the knowledge and skills related to:

Curriculum philosophy and its relationship to comprehensive school health education
General organization and specific curriculum content by grade level
Understanding essential health knowledge and overarching lifestyle goals
Requisite familiarity with the scope and sequence of the curriculum
Dissecting and exploring specific body parts and systems through virtual experience
Organizing and managing peripheral kits (videos, models, books, etc.)
Applying educational theory through diverse instructional strategies
Integrating health across the content areas
Developing of an action plan for implementing and sustaining the curriculum
Adapting lessons to meet the needs of a wide range of student abilities
Advocating for school health education