Month: February 2025

Have you tried getting through a full day of school without eating a proper breakfast or lunch?

This is a mentally and physically draining experience that one in four children and youth in Canada live with due to food insecurity (Toronto Foundation Student Success, 2023). Health Canada defines food insecurity as “the inability to access sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets dietary needs for an active and healthy life due to financial or other resource constraints” (Government of Canada, 2020).

In our Health Competency Seminar, my group has chosen to focus on nutrition and the connection it has to broader themes of active health. Personally, through this project, I am intrigued to examine how food security connects to physical well-being, mental health, and social connections. I hypothesize that there is a strong connection between these concepts, and when food insecurity increases, health and well-being decrease and vice versa. More specifically related to the study of PHE, a student who eats well will not just be physically healthier, but they will also be more alert in class, have higher confidence, and a higher chance of participating. With these positive outcomes, learners can make the most out of in-class learning activities, which are designed to promote active participation, critical thinking, and collaboration. I think that incorporating interactive activities in our seminar can promote engagement and critical thinking from when entire class. For example, going through case studies and having discussions on how schools can better support students facing food insecurity.

There is a strong need for government funded school lunch programs. A teacher in the BC education system named Brent Mansfield, co-founded a lunch program at his school. In the video, he shines a light on his first-hand personal experience witnessing the benefit of how access to foods that are nutrient rich improves students’ school days and their ability to learn and focus. He also touches on the social and community benefit from connections built through initiatives that focus on healthy eating and learning how to cook. Healthy eating and learning how to cook are super important for the health and well-being of students, and schools should take more of a responsibility and role in. Additionally, at the start of the video there is an emphasis on how food insecurity is an issue faced by many beyond elementary, middle, and high schools. Today, approximately 38% of students at postsecondary institutions experience food insecurity (How many Canadians are affected by household food insecurity?, 2021). Information like things raises questions about the government’s responsibility in providing food security and where it ends, or if it ends at all? An important message to take from this video is that there is a need for a systemic change in which the government steps in and utilizes its resources to address a huge barrier to learning, which is food insecurity in all schools.

So, What Now?

Now that we know the reason why having initiatives that address food insecurity among youth and children to support their health and well-being is so important, let’s take a deeper look at a program that has actively taken steps to make a difference from 1994 until now.

The Breakfast Club of Canada started in Longueuil, Quebec as a small initiative to provide breakfast to children in need. Since then, the program has grown into a national organization that supports school nutrition programs all over Canada in providing healthy meals to students who might otherwise go without (Breakfast club of Canada – school breakfast programs – children’s charity, 2023).

How the Breakfast Club of Canada Connects With the Comprehensive School Health Model

When examining the impact of The Breakfast Club of Canada, I have grown to understand that it does so much more for the health of schools and communities than just feeding students. The program connects to the community partnerships pillar of the comprehensive school health model to support communities by:

• Creating a positive environment where students from different classes within a school can eat together and build social connections for a stronger community.
• Teaching nutrition and healthy eating habits to support the long-term health and well-being of members of the school community.
• Building partnerships, which is a powerful tool, with local organizations who have the resources in place to make sure they can access food and continue to supply it in schools.

I have included a video below that I really like, because it does a good job of capturing a yearly summary of the impact that the Breakfast Club of Canada has had in schools over a timeline of the past 30 years. Something that particularly interested me was how the pandemic and inflation post-pandemic impacted the organization’s ability to remain sustainable, since many businesses suffered in that time. In 2020 and 2021, their strategy was to withhold from opening new programs, and their focus was on maintaining the existing ones.

Conclusion

All in all, this club is a practical solution that addresses the issue of food insecurity, which creates a barrier to learning. I believe that bringing food into schools through programs like this can be a promising way to give children and youth an equal chance to succeed socially, mentally, and physically inside and out of schools. No student should have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.

My question to you is, do you think schools have an obligation to take on more responsibility when it comes to food security and the health and well-being of their students?

References

Toronto Foundation Student Success. (2023, August 31). Food insecurity among Canadian school-age children jumps by nearly 30%. Toronto Foundation for Student Success. https://tfss.ca/2023/08/31/food-insecurity-among-canadian-school-age-children-jumps-by-nearly-30-toronto-star/

Government of Canada. (2020). Household food insecurity in Canada: Overview – Canada.ca. Canada.Ca. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutrition/food-nutrition-surveillance/health-nutrition-surveys/canadian-community-health-survey-cchs/household-food-insecurity-canada-overview.html

How many Canadians are affected by household food insecurity? (2021, December 10). PROOF. https://proof.utoronto.ca/food-insecurity/how-many-canadians-are-affected-by-household-food-insecurity/

Breakfast club of Canada – school breakfast programs – children’s charity. (2023, November 3). Breakfast Club of Canada. https://www.breakfastclubcanada.org/

REVOLUTIONIZING LEARNING: HOW UNIVERSAL DESIGN MAKES EDUCATION WORK FOR EVERYONE

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) refers to a set of principles for creating an inclusive and accessible curriculum, that can revolutionize students’ learning experiences (Creating inclusive and accessible learning environments in higher education, 2023). UDL is based on a framework made up of three key principles that guide educators to develop and use learning materials and assessments so that their students achieve the best learning outcomes.

The three categories of UDL, multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action/expression, focus on altering the design of an environment rather than situating the problem as the perceived deficit within the learner (Principles of UDL, 2023).

MULTIPLE MEANS OF ENGAGEMENT

This component of UDL encourages educators to explore different ways of creating lessons that are engaging and capture learners’ attention.

• Because autonomy fuels interest, learner engagement can happen by presenting choices (Krapp, 1999). A study conducted by psychologist Andreas Krapp confirmed that interest-based learning, which basically means giving learners choices to meet their different interests, leads to better engagement and deeper critical thinking (Krapp, 1999). The findings of this study make sense because greater student interest leads to higher engagement with the learning material, which then enhances the learning experience. An example of how interest, or choice-based learning can happen in PHE is by giving students choice and variety to choose between different movement activities (Anonymous, 2020). This study conducted by PHE Canada recommends interest-based engagement in physical activity settings, claiming that the benefits of this approach to teaching in PHE encourages more engagement from students (Anonymous, 2020). When reflecting on the findings of this study and my personal experiences, I can’t help but remember how disengaged I was as a student. With a better understanding of the concept of interest-based learning and its impact on student engagement now, I feel less concerned about my lack of interest and poor performance in middle school. The teaching approach was very traditional, and only way to pass was to memorize and regurgitate content in the format of a test. Most of the time, I did not understand the reason behind learning the information and felt like it was useless knowledge with no benefit in my personal life. To stimulate interest and motivation for learning educators can inform learners about the importance of the content and find ways to connect it to their personal lives. In addition, providing options that trigger the affective part of the brain like excitement, challenge, or interest can enhance engagement levels (Krapp, 1999)!

MULTIPLE MEANS OF REPRESENTATION

This component of UDL encourages educators to convey information and content in different ways so messages can be understood by learners with different learning styles and abilities. The use of multiple media forms such as visuals, audio, animation, and text can help learners gather facts through what they see, hear, and read. This is especially important in educational settings where students have different learning styles and some digest information better by reading while others from watching a video. An example of this being applied to PHE is educators using diverse instructional methods in their demonstrations, such as both verbal cues and peer modelling. These means of representation can be a powerful tool in supporting students to understand and grasp certain physical or health concepts being shown to them, like how to properly position yourself for a serve in squash. Fortunately, there are studies that support the use of multiple means of representation in education and claim that it helps students with different learning styles grasp PHE concepts, which enhances the learning experience as a result (Heynen, 2008).

• I often find exceptional examples of good display of information on social media, and I believe what makes them so impactful is the use of multiple means of representation. Wether the people who put these videos together know it or not, they use one of the three key principles of the UDL framework to effectively communicate with a broad audience. Although the content in the video below does not relate to our course directly, the structure and design of the video does, making it a good example that showcases the use of multiple means of representation effectively. In my opinion, the video has a strong potential to inform a broad audience with different needs how to handle a specific real-world high-stress situation because it uses multiple media forms (closed-captioning, animation, audio, visuals). When I think about the audience that may come across this video, I assume that english might be their second language and because of this, the visual animation and closed-captioning make the video more impactful and easier to understand.

MULTIPLE MEANS OF ACTION/EXPRESSION

This component of UDL encourages educators to offer options to their students so that they have a chance to demonstrate their learning through different modalities. For example, when assessing students’ learning, giving them a choice between making a video or doing a presentation to showcase their learning. In PHE, allowing students to demonstrate their learning in ways that go beyond traditional assessments, such as through skill-based assessments or by performing movement routines, can go a long way in terms of motivating them to engage with the content.The UDL framework encourages educators to offer choices to students as a way to support learner agency, the capacity to actively participate in making choices in service of learning goals (CAST, Inc, n.d.). In my opinion, the way a learning environment is set up can influence the extent to which all voices are heard, valued, and able to contribute. UDL is structured in a way that makes the learning experience adaptable to meet the learning needs of students. This allows them to share their voice and demonstrate their learning in a way that is unique and meaningful to them. Reflecting back to my personal experience in middle school, I believe if there were more options for freedom of personal expression and choice in my learning modalities my learning experience would have been more meaningful. The goal of this UDL principle is to inspire educators to be proactive and provide learners with choices. With choices, educators give their students autonomy, which transforms the learning experience from being centred around compliance and passive reception to one filled with curiosity and active participation.

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All in all, instead of using teaching resources inefficiently, educators should use the key principles of UDL as a guide to make broad adjustments that improve the learning experience for all learners in their class by minimizing barriers and maximizing learning (Galkienė & Monkevičienėė, 2021). Further, PHE teachers can use UDL to create inclusive environmental that are accommodating towards the different skill levels, physical abilities, and learning preferences amongst the diverse group of students they get to teach every year for better learning outcomes. When students enter the gym prepared for a PHE class, it is the teacher’s job to reflect and consider the possibility for barriers that could prevent all students from being part of the class. For example, are you only using one way to deliver instruction? If so, this does not support a variety of learning styles so what adjustments can you make so everyone in the class can engage and participate. After learning about UDL, I actually believe that PHE is one of the best setting for a UDL framework to thrive in because movement-based learning is different, which makes it well suited for the use of the three principles of UDL. I think that with the current non-traditional approach to teaching in BC, teachers have the opportunity to be more flexible in the delivery of their lessons following the UDL framework so every learner can demonstrate curricular competencies, understand content, and ultimately be able to grasp the big ideas and core competencies of PHE (Davis et al., 2023). Ultimately, it is the positive learning experiences that will drive younger generations to be lifelong learners!

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The following infographic does a really good job at explaining that fairness in education does not mean treating all students the same, but rather giving each student what they need to succeed. It uses the analogy of a doctor providing different treatments for different medical needs, and highlights the importance of accommodations in the classroom as a teaching strategy to support the diverse learning needs of students.

REFERENCES

Anonymous. (2020). A Summary of North American High School Students’ Perspectives of Physical Education. Physical & Health Education Journal, 86(1), 1–15. https://phecanada.ca/professional-learning/journal/summary-north-american-high-school-students-perspectives-physical

CAST, Inc. (n.d.). The Goal of UDL: Learner agency. Cast.org. Retrieved February 1, 2025, from https://udlguidelines.cast.org/more/udl-goal/

Creating inclusive and accessible learning environments in higher education. (2023, July 10). Norix. https://norix.com/creating-inclusive-and-accessible-learning-environments-in-higher-education/

Davis, M., Gleddie, D. L., Nylen, J., Leidl, R., Toulouse, P., Baker, K., & Gillies, L. (2023). Canadian physical and health education competencies.

Galkienė, A., & Monkevičienėė, O. (2021). Inclusive Learning and Educational Equity 5 Improving Inclusive Education through Universal Design for Learning. http://www.springer.com/series/13450

Heynen, C. (2008). Viewing and Visual Representation in the Physical Education Classroom. Strategies, 22(1), 25–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/08924562.2008.10590805

Krapp, A. (1999). Interest, motivation and learning: An educational-psychological perspective. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 14(1), 23–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23420114

Principles of UDL. (2023, September 12). Centre for Innovation in Campus Mental Health. https://campusmentalhealth.ca/toolkits/accessibility-and-accommodations/accessibility/principles-of-udl/