A Message to Teachers:

As experienced educators you are now all too well aware of the increasing demands being placed upon schools and teachers from an ever expanding list of mandated subjects to be included in classroom curricula to the ever more frequent state standardized testing of students that is associated with NCLB.

Unfortunately, at the same time teachers are being told to cover more academic ground in less time, as a society we are also being forced to confront the significant negative health ramifications triggered by our nation’s increasingly sedentary lifestyle and widespread proliferation of inadequate and often times inappropriate nutrition practices. As educators you are seeing the implications every day in your schools: children have less opportunity for vigorous physical activity both during school and afterward; lunches and snacks brought from home lacking in healthful nutritional value; and students and their parents are with increasing frequency either overweight or even obese.

Studies have shown that students receiving appropriate levels of nutrition and physical activity perform better academically. With government health agencies telling us that failure to eat properly and get enough exercise results in lower quality of life and a far greater susceptibility to a whole range of life threatening chronic diseases, we at Nutrition & Fitness for a Healthy New York have set out to help children and their families understand, learn and practice making “healthy choices for healthy lives.” We would like to help make sure that this and future generations of students are given the opportunity to live a quality of life that will enable them to enjoy the fruits of the education you work each and every day to provide them.

Nutrition & Fitness for a Healthy New York, (N&F), is a Not-for-Profit, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to educating children and families about making “healthy choices for healthy lives.” N&F is working with collaborating partners from the education and allied health professions to present motivational health related physical activity and nutritional lifestyle education school-based assemblies. The assemblies and ongoing supportive follow up curriculum programming targeted to reach students grades 3-8 are being underwritten (by noncommercial sources) and, as such, are being made available to schools across New York at no cost to the hosting school.

N&F’s intention is to work cooperatively with New York’s teachers and the entire education community to help provide students and their families a framework in which to practice outside of school the good health, nutrition and physical education skills they are being taught in school. Our free programming is intended to augment and reinforce the curriculum being taught in the primary and middle school grades and help students integrate healthy physical activity and nutrition information and practices in the other aspects of their lives.

To help students’ efforts to practice making healthy choices for healthy lives, N&F will also be reaching out to and engaging the students’ parents and caregivers through a combination of media. We believe that engaging both students and families in a total team approach will have a positive and lasting impact upon student efforts to begin and continue making healthy physical activity and nutritional choices. Together, as a family, they will work cooperatively and help to provide the positive reinforcement, social support, and relapse prevention mechanisms necessary for the creation of desired healthful physical activity and nutritional habits. N&F’s approach, using both school based and home-focused initiatives, is intended to promote enjoyable lifelong physical activities and responsible nutritional behaviors using a variety of media to inform, motivate, and provide ongoing support to the family as students and parents take steps together to incorporate healthy practices into their daily lives.

For more information on how to bring N&F’s programming to your school, Contact Us.