Well-Being Experts Challenge State Governors to Meet New Educational Requirements With Whole Child Programs
Leading a national conversation to prioritize the well-being of children
STATE COLLEGE, Pa., Dec. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Children's dreams and well-being can be empowered! Through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015), it is now required that schools provide whole child mental health and well-being programs.
As leading educational experts—on socio-emotional learning, school-based mental health and well-being, and prevention and resiliency programs—The Brzycki Group and The Center for the Self in Schools are announcing the Well-Being in School Workshop Series. The Series trains K-12 professional educators, health care providers and policy makers. The Series addresses: meeting the new ESSA requirements with whole child well-being programs; measuring what parents really want measured—the inner psychological attributions that will give children the tools for a happy, healthy and successful life; and integrating three research-based best practices into the curriculum. These practices include the Integrated Self Model (iSelf) to teach resiliency and self-awareness; the Self Across the Curriculum to incorporate well-being and mental health factors into the everyday classroom; and The Success Predictor to help children learn self-agency through identifying their dreams for their life.
It is critical for all of the 50 state Governors and Secretaries of Education to relay to students, parents, teachers and health care professionals the importance of mental and physical well-being to students' success in life. The list of well-being challenges is long—bullying, cutting, depression, opioid addition, suicide—and unfortunately, most Governors are focusing on the tail end of these problems, when they are most expensive to treat.
For example, in Pennsylvania, Governor Wolf signed five new bills recently to fight the heroin epidemic—all address treatment, none address prevention! Treatment is not prevention. Effective medical treatment for addiction, just like effective medical treatment for any other chronic disease, has high lifelong costs. While states expand the scope of our interventions and treatment options, they must also strengthen proven prevention strategies that teach resiliency and self-awareness.
The ESSA has now made it a legal requirement for schools to measure and demonstrate whole child development—which offers a preventative and protective approach to well-being challenges. Regulations allow for up to 40% of school quality measures to include programs addressing socio-emotional factors, such as health and physical education, comprehensive school-wide emotional health and drug and violence prevention. The time has come for states to develop interagency policies that incorporate effective school-based programs designed to promote positive youth development.
The Brzycki Group is proud to have helped to influence the new ESSA requirements and provisions through its research, publishing, consulting to the US DOE and advocacy work—and now the Group is working with states to meet the requirements.
Dr. Henry Brzycki heads The Brzycki Group, a human development and learning research and education organization, and is co-founder with Elaine Brzycki of The Center for the Self in Schools, a non-profit initiative in State College, PA to impact the well-being of students. They are authors of two influential books, The Self in Schooling: Theory and Practice - How to Create Happy, Healthy, Flourishing Children in the 21st Century and Student Success in Higher Education: Developing the Whole Person through High-Impact Practices, available in print and eBook formats from Amazon and Barnes and Noble booksellers.
Inquiries can be made at:
If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Dr. Henry G. Brzycki at 814-753-2505 or email at [email protected].
SOURCE The Brzycki Group & The Center for the Self in Schools
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