Inner City Health Class Case Study
Organization: Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services
Funding: Private Grant Funding Love Notes 3.0
Curricula used: Love Notes 3.0
Curricula benefits:
- Great way to educate and empower young people
- Challenges many norms that aren’t healthy
- Young people are open to what is different from their current thinking
- Program is engaging.
- Information is relatable and adaptable to different populations as long as facilitator knows how to adapt it
- Curriculum is very user friendly
- All lessons are connected. Facilitator can do lessons in the order that the audience needs
Target Audience: Health Classes in the nine high schools in the Grand Rapids Public School District; Health is a requirement of graduation. Mostly 9th graders, but may include other grades.
Audience Demographics: Fall 2018: 27% White; 25% Hispanic; 19% African-American; 28% Other/Not-reported. 50% Female; 42% Male. Winter 2018:31% Hispanic; 31% African American; 12% White; 26% Other/Not-reported. 53% Female; 43% Male.
Class size: 20 or more students (served 596 students for academic year 2018-2019)
Location of Instruction: High School, Grades 9-12
Length of Instruction: Once a week for an hour with a minimum of 10 sessions. Always teaches lessons 1 and 2 back-to-back. Then, may teach other lessons in any order, as needed and indicated by discussions by the students.
Utilization of teacher and student materials:
Teachers have the option to use the workbook activities as optional activities outside of the instruction time.
Incentives to teachers and students: Health teachers are now expecting the Pine Rest instructor to come to their classes. She is invited to the district’s Professional Development Day to schedule instruction. Sometimes she will bring candy to the class for treats. At the end of the semester she shows a movie and organizes a potluck, i.e. pizza and cupcakes.
Tips: Everything is relational. To get into the schools you have to have the relationship with the administration. Have a relationship with the young people outside of the classroom and be relatable to the students when you are teaching. You must be engaging with the students. Be flexible and take the time to know your audience. Relationships are the basis for everything.