This is how one state’s textbook adoption process worked this past year. I’ll let you guess the state…

• Every 7 or 8 years, a subject area reviews and revises their state adoption textbook list. Oh- sorry, it’s changed to state adoption ‘materials/curriculum’ list. I think that’s a good thing?

• A curriculum specialist from the state comes up with a list of potential teachers to sit on this review process for the staff at the department of education. (By the way, all salaries and program dollars are financed by the ‘textbook’ and ‘curricula’ companies through this process.)

• The teachers selected form a content panel to participate in the adoption process develop criteria to select textbooks/curricula. In the case of health and PE, this is where the wonderfully useful HE-CAT and PE-CAT come in. Why not use the criteria established in these tools?

• The staff at the department make the content panel add certain criteria. Sometimes, professionals do not want to add the department’s criteria. But, they are forced to do so. Let me give you an example. The law states that any materials entered in to participate MUST be basal. Meaning, the curricula can’t be in modules. The adopted textbook, I mean ‘material’ must include comprehensive health education in one document. Can you say, “textbook” only?

• The textbook publishers and curricula businesses ‘pay to play’. It’s expensive and only the LARGE textbook publishers or maybe a large curriculum business can afford to play. Again, these monies pay for the department’s full-time staff salaries and program. Those smaller, research-based, or best-practice curricula in the field of, let’s say for example HEALTH EDUCATION, can’t afford to play. Yes, the most effective curricula can’t be part of this process.

• Some people on the content panel tell the bureaucrats that the process and laws are biased and archaic and unfair. Those select few are asked to leave.

• Now, this State has a health education adoption list of BIG BUSINESS materials. Not the best, most effective materials for our students’ health and well-being, but the publishers that pay our Department of Education’s adoption staff salaries.

What can we do about this?

During my time at the Oregon Department of Ed, I interacted with many elementary, middle, high school teachers and school counselors. Since most of the effective curricula available aligns to the NHES (National health education standards), lessons include role playing. This wonderful skill allows students the opportunity to practice effective communication, make decisions, set goals, advocate, access information, analyze influences, self manage and even can asses students knowledge on a given topic.

There are not many teaching strategies in which students have the opportunity to practice that have the potential to touch upon so many skills. With that said, I heard teachers complaining time after time about facilitating role plays in their classroom.This is when I asked Rocky Mountain Center http://www.rmc.org/ if they had materials developed for teaching role plays in the classroom. They had started a training on it, but I think it was only offered once. They shared their developed materials and I adapted, added and revised.

Now, I have a 3-4 hour skill-building workshop on facilitating role-plays in the health education classroom. I have offered it at State conferences and on professional days for school counselors and health teachers. It is super popular and the feedback has been positive. I have revised it even more- based on evaluations and feedback and it’s super strong now.   After taking this workshop, I hope educators feel more confident in their ability to allow students the opportunity to practice this critical skill in the classroom. For more information, contact me! 

The day the HE-CAT could be publicly mentioned was a good day. I think we owe a congratulations to those at CDC that helped develop this wonderfully useful tool. I am thrilled the HE-CAT will help support teacher, schools, districts and states develop and select strong health education materials and curriculum.

Beaverton School District in Oregon was the national pilot of this tool and accompanied training. Being part of that process was an amazing experience. To see so many engaged educators, parents, administrators and community partners have say through a well-organized curriculum process. Now, granted the process took 2 full years and thanks to Beaverton SD, quite a bit of money, but in the end, this district has selected and adopted research-based and best-practice curricula for their teachers. I facilitated the second year piece. After the school board adopted the curriculum, I brought the health committee (K-12) through a process of developing assessments that aligned to their benchmarks/outcomes at each grade level. I facilitated the field test of implementing the assessments, gathering student work, reviewing student work by developing tools for teachers and using those data collected to inform and revise the assessments. 

I recognize that the Sexual Heath module is not part of this version and I strongly hope that it will be in the future. I’ve joked in the past that we should just start calling it the HE-SEX. One can only hope that with the next administration, we’ll have a comprehensive HE-CAT. I hope you reading this (whether teacher, administrator, prevention specialist, parent, community member) goes to CDC’s site and utilizes this amazing resource. I’m happy to help if you have any questions.

 Read about HE-CAT on the cdc.gov site