Bogli Consulting Specialist Maesie Speer (far right) attended the Alliance's Youth Advisory Board training.

Below are some highlights of Jess’ upcoming facilitation work including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American School Health Association conference.  Contact us if you are interested in bringing Bogli Consulting to your community

Idaho Coordinated School Health Institute | Boise, ID
We will be facilitating a two-day institute for the Idaho Coordinated School Health Program on August 2 and 3, 2010 that will including the Systems Thinking, Systems Changing simulation, school health advisory council training, using data to inform school health programs and policy work as a key infrastructure component to CSH.

Oregon Healthy Communities Institute | Bend, OR
We will be facilitating the Systems Thinking, Systems Changing simulation activity in Bend, Oregon on August 25 for the Oregon Department of Health’s Healthy Communities Institute.

CDC-DASH Professional Development Project | Washington, DC
Bogli Consulting, Inc and ETR Associates will be co-facilitating an event for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s NGO funded partners, called Moving Policy Forward: Beyond the Basics.  This training will prepare DASH-funded NGOs to build the capacity of education agencies to promote local policies that positively impact the health behaviors of youth.

American School Health Association Conference | Kansas City, MO
Jess Bogli will present the following sessions at the 84th annual ASHA Conference, October 13 – 16, 2010.

How to Take Districts and Schools Through a Mapping and Alignment Process Using the National Health Education Standards: Participants of this workshop will learn a process that will support the implementation of a well-developed K-12 health education scope and sequence process at their school, district and/or state level.

Working to Institutionalize Sex Education: A Framework for Advancement: An overview of the key components that are necessary to support and ultimately institutionalize sex education within public schools will be presented with some stories from the field.

Systems Thinking, Systems Changing: Implementing School Health Programs Effectively Within The System! (post-conference workshop): This interactive activity  is used by teams in workshop settings all over the country to experience what it takes to make effective systemic change in schools. It teaches educators, school boards and councils, leadership teams, school administrators, educational consultants and reformers about the structures and strategies that schools need to be continuously improving learning organizations that are the best they can be.

Bogli Consulting has facilitated this highly engaging activity to many organizations, partners of education and within schools, districts and state departments of education all over the country. We frame the activity by using school health examples and language.

Nebraska has one DASH-funded position (HIV) and Brian and Julane’s positions are state or federally- grant funded. They have pulled together dollars (Team Nutrition Grant) to work with schools this year, as well as a larger CSH Statewide Partnership Workgroup that has consisted of more than 50 members.

Nebraska’s steering committee, consisting of DOE and DOH staff has been busy! They will be working with the 5 pilot schools to implement CSH, they are building internal infrastructure to address CSH at state and local level, and developing resources for training schools. They have had discussions with key legislators and some ongoing efforts include workshops, training events, a larger DOH plan that includes CSH, stimulus grant applications and partnership development, partnership development, partnership development!

I want to compliment them on all their hard work!

STATE OF NEBRASKA STATE BOARD OF EDUCATON March 2, 2010 POLICY FOR COORDINATED SCHOOL HEALTH

The Nebraska State Board of Education believes that education and health are inextricably intertwined. Healthy children learn better; children must be healthy mentally, physically, and socially. To achieve maximum success schools, families and communities must work together. A coordinated school health approach, designed to coordinate services and emphasize partnerships, will promote the physical, social, and cognitive development of children leading to increased academic success.

Preventable health risk behaviors formed in childhood persist into adulthood and are frequently interrelated. The Nebraska State Board of Education believes that the education system, in partnership with families and communities, should work together to address these health risk behaviors which, if left unattended, can lead to serious health problems and disabilities that are costly burdens on families and the entire state of Nebraska.

The Board believes coordinated school health positively impacts student academic achievement and empowers students with the knowledge, skills, and judgment essential to help them make healthy and responsible choices in life. The Board, therefore, encourages each Nebraska school district/building to adopt its own vision for student health and to plan, adopt, implement, evaluate, and periodically re-examine the effectiveness of coordinated school health within their district/school.

The Board encourages the following:

I. Each school district/school develop, adopt, and implement a comprehensive plan for coordinated school health based on the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention model for coordinated school health. Components of coordinated school health should include, but not be limited to, health education; physical education; nutrition services; health services; healthy school environment; school counseling, psychological, and social services; staff health and wellness; and family and community involvement.

II. Each school district establish a School Health Council and each school building establish a School Health Team that meets four times per year. In the alternative, a district may assign these activities to existing councils, committees or teams.

III. Each district/school designate a School Health Coordinator to assist with implementing and evaluating coordinated school health.

• Attending Amy Greene’s session on How Health Departments Work and How to Work with Health Departments
• Attending David Wiley’s session in State of Sex Ed in Texas… we have it made in Oregon! Oregon Health Sexual Health Plan
• Hearing and being completed motivated by Reed V. Tuckson’s keynote
• Recognizing  and celebrating the accomplishments of so many distinguished health educators in our field
• Reconnecting with Kathy, Julane, Susan, Darryl, Jamie, Sarah, Lisa, Nancy, Barbara, Jackie, Tom and many, many others!

And social highlights?

• Bowling with Bill Potts-Datema and John Henry-Ledwith… and getting my butt kicked!
• Dinner with the ETR crew
• Snowball fights (c’mon- we had 2 feet of snow!)
• Winning the loose tea silent auction item (thanks Susan Wooley!)

See you all at Society of State Directors in Indiana, AAHPERD or next year’s ASHA in Kansas City!

This past weekend, Oregon’s Health Education Cadre of Trainers began its’ 13th year! The cadre was initially funded through Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) HIV funds. In 1999, the funding was augmented with state tobacco and Safe and Drug Free school funds. In 2003, increased DASH funding provided even more resources. Currently, our funding is not provided by DASH funds, or State Department of Education funds. We are funded by a variety of partners, including the Office of State Fire Marshal (injury and fire prevention), DHS Problem Gambling (also supports other risk behaviors), Oregon Dairy Council (nutrition ed), and the GROVE/Packard Foundation; WISE grant (Working to Institutionalize Sexuality Education). With about $120,000 this school year, we are offering training events at no cost to teachers, administrators and other educators/partners around the state.

We have offered/currently offer (at no cost):

• Health Education Foundation Training (Effective Practices in Health Education, Laws/Policies related to Health Education, National and Oregon Health Education Standards and Oregon Healthy Teens Survey) (Half Day)
• Using Health Education Standards and Assessment in the Classroom (2 full days)
• District Mapping and Alignment (2-day, K-12 school district training for scope and sequence)
• Curriculum Trainings within the area of Alcohol, Tobacco and other Drug Prevention, Safe and Drug Free Schools, Sexual Health Promotion, Fire Awareness, Injury Prevention, Comprehensive Health Education Curricula Programs and more! All curriculum trainings include the following components:
  • Effective Practices in Health Education Activity
  • Curriculum overview
  • Teach-backs of Lessons within Curriculum Program
  • Answering difficult questions in the Classroom
  • Alignment to Oregon Health Education Content Standards
  • Implementation Barriers and Supports

Over the years, the cadre has an average of 15 trainers during a school year who commit annually. Trainers include K-12 teachers, district prevention specialists and curriculum directors, retirees and professors of higher education. The co-coordinators (myself and Kari Stuhmer) plan a full weekend fall retreat, a one day meeting in the winter and a full day meeting in spring (spring meeting focused on using data, our post evals, to drive decisions into the next school year).

During our fall retreat at Caldera http://www.calderaarts.org/ this year, we offered professional development and training to our trainers. We had a great time! We learned more about the WISE grant, problem gambling high school assessment prompts that one of the trainers developed, shared training opportunities, networked and shared ideas of how to train others around the health education standards (Oregon is aligned to the NHES).

We hope to have a website for the cadre up soon! We were funded $12,000 to design/develop one… so look for it or let me know if you are interested in being notified once it’s up! jess@bogliconsulting.com

As always- it was great to see colleagues and friends again. I can hardly wait for the Healthy Kids Learn Better Cadre retreat Oct 16-18 at Caldera, outside of Sisters-  http://www.calderaarts.org/

I am starting to really depend on this group of professionals to be there as experts in our field of school health, but also as friends. I can hardly wait for next weekend. My husband is the cook for 22 of us- we have quite a menu planned:

Friday night snacks

Saturday breakfast- homemade granola, fruit, yogurt, milk

Saturday lunch- Middle Eastern theme- (homemade) baba and hummus, pita, feta, tabouli

Saturday dinner- Homemade Butternut Squash Soup and homemade White Bean and Kale soup, salad and fresh bread

Sunday breakfast- PANCAKES! (and fruit)

Gigi is in charge of Saturday night activities, Dawn will bring a fun twist as always and we are expected to bring some article of Halloween costume… hmmm. Might be time to bring on some practical jokes/tricks!

The actors portrayed emotions (some happy, some not), struggles, crushes, relationships and even high risk behaviors, including a suicide. All of us can relate to something in the performance, having been a teenager at some point in our lives.

One part I particularly enjoyed was the popularity chart. Immediately, I had a strong emotion of “Wow, times have changed,” when I saw that ’skaters’ are now one rung under ‘preps’ for popularity. I am, in fact married to a skateboarder (who has been skating now for over 20 years) and back in high school, skaters were not considered popular, mainstream or cool.

What hasn’t changed? Stereotypes, assumptions, bullies. Teens just trying to live day to day. Whether it be to study for an upcoming test (Daria’s overachieving tendencies) or falling in love (Ethan and Daria) or who to text message (Payton), teenage years are difficult. On top of all those things, some of the characters were homeless, in foster care, had a parent leaving for Iraq, self-cutting, depressed, and didn’t fell like they fit in with anyone.

I appreciated the dichotomy (and truth) to the explanation of how we all ‘fill up’ or ‘feel fulfilled’ somehow. For Colby he’s the most popular, but inside self harms by cutting. On the outside, Colby appears confident and cool. Everyone wants to be him or be like him. Vita is trying to articulate what it’s like to be the ‘big’ girl and tryout to be a dancer in a world unrealistic expectations of girls and women. At times, a character makes a comment that is truly offensive to another person, but doesn’t recognize how. Zac makes fun of kids that wear jeans with ripped jeans as you see Justin (homeless) lying under the train tracks with ripped jeans. Does Zac know that Justin is homeless and has no access to other pants? In the lunch-line, a group of kids make assumptions about Daria. Are you Chinese? Are your parents from there? As one kid explains that her parents are white and she’s adopted. She storms out, obviously offended.

The Real High School Musical begins to tell the story of how difficult being a teenager may be. It gets at some of the core issues that kids face. And, points to the importance of friendship, communication, respect, community and support. After the performance, the audience of 8th graders filter into the Field House where booths of resources and community partners are there to share what they can do to provide support for youth and their families and friends.

I think this production would encourage more teens to dialogue about different issues their facing and potentially save lives. BRAVO to the partners, directors, choreographers, tech, crew and of course the teenage actors!

Neal Lockhart believes that SEX is a bad word. One his kids shouldn’t hear.  First, The Great Body Shop is one of the strongest comprehensive elementary curriculum programs in the country and it is NOT a series of pamphlets. It is a curriculum comprised of lessons that  elementary teachers teach, aligned to the National Health Education Standards and reinforce age-appropriate knowledge and skills development, including decision making, goal setting, advocacy, communication skills, etc.
McMinnville used a process to select the curriculum engaging parents and community members. Some of that process was facilitated using a tool developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Adolescent and School Health called the Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool. The process was a fair and ethical one.

What Lockhart doesn’t know is that prevention of risk behaviors needs to begin in the classroom two years prior to initiation of that behavior. The reason 9 and 10 year olds are learning about these topics is because we know that some middle school youth are starting to become sexually active, and most are going through puberty. Many have questions that their parents can’t or don’t want to answer. Sometimes the classroom is a safe place for youth to have their questions answered. It’s important to teach these topics and give opportunities for students to practice interpersonal communication skills if they do get into certain risky circumstances.

I would encourage Lockhart to review the Oregon Healthy Teens Data for his county to understand that students are engaging in sexual behaviors at a young age. As health educators we ALWAYS advocate for abstinence to be the healthiest choice for our youth, but we need to educate them on how to protect themselves as well.

The Healthy Kids Learn Better Cadre of Trainers provides evidence-based health education trainings and resources to teachers all over Oregon.  The Cadre began in 1996 and was initially funded through Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) HIV funds. In 1999, the funding was augmented with state tobacco and Safe and Drug Free school funds. In 2003 increased DASH funding provided even more resources.

Over the past ten years, the cadre has had an average of 18 trainers during a school year who commit annually. Trainers are selected based on their health education credentials and teaching experience.  Trainers included K-12 teachers, district prevention specialists and curriculum directors, retirees and professors of higher education.

Cadre trainers receive professional development twice a year at a retreat to ensure that they are able to provide health education resources that reflect the most current best practices in health topic areas and teaching practices.

When resources from the CDC were no longer available, the Coordinated School Health Team Lead in the Department of Human Services worked with partners in need of school health education expertise to pool resources.  The Team lead, with support from other partners, wrote and now administers a contract whereby the Oregon’s professional organization for Health and PE teachers called Oregon Alliance for Health, PE, Recreation and Dance (OAHPERD) serves as a fiscal manager to the Cadre.   During the 2008-09 school year, two funding sources provided the dollars for the cadre: The State Fire Marshal’s Office and Department of Human Services’ Problem Gambling Program. Together these organizations provided about $110,000 for the fiscal year.

The Cadre provides training focused on Problem Gambling Prevention and Disaster Preparedness, to school district personnel using curricula, aligned to Oregon Health Education Standards.

The hope of the Cadre members, OAHPERD, DHS, and the funding partners is that others will understand the value of the Cadre and that additional scopes of work will be funded.  Leaders in the Cadre will be meeting with other interested partners later this month.

If you are interested in hearing more about how we function, how we build partners for sustainable dollars and how we train, contact us!

Jess@bogliconsulting.com