Wellness Committees

Want to start or enhance the wellness program at your school? Pick what works for your environment. Call us with any questions. Send us great ideas that have worked for you! You can encourage your parents to do the following:

 

Meet with your Principal and PTA President. Tell them about your healthy school goals. Their commitment is very important to the success of your endeavors.

 

Pass the Real Food For Kids Resolution with your PTA. This is a great place to start to gauge sentiment from your PTA about their desire to create a more healthy school environment. Contact a Real Food For Kids representative (contact@realfoodforkids.org) to present at one of your PTA meetings to talk about the objectives and progress of Real Food For Kids. Click here to see a sample resolution. Input your school name. We suggest you post this on your PTA website so parents can become familiar with it leading up to the PTA meeting. This is also available in Spanish and Vietnamese translations.

 

Do fun activities with students! Set up educational messages in morning announcements, plan activities that are easy to do during lunch, have the children draw pictures of how they see healthy food. Click here for a fun example of what you can do at your school. For some ideas on how to get kids to eat healthier - click here.

 

Sign the Petition! Individuals can sign this petition that supports the Real Food For Kids’ goals of removing the highly processed items from the school food and offering more real, whole food. The petition can be signed by clicking here.

 

Pass on the Petition. Please send to other parents, post on your PTA website, send to neighbors, grandparents, friends, co-workers, etc. The county needs to know that we are united in our desire to offer healthier choices at school.

 

Write to your school board member(s). The school board will take action on behalf of its parents IF they know that many parents support a particular cause. While we enjoy strong school board support for the healthy school food initiative, it is vital that everyone write to his or her school board member, at-large members, or the entire board. We encourage you to customize the letter, if desired. Please click here for a sample letter and directory of official email addresses.

 

Write a mission statement for your wellness committee. What do you really want to accomplish as a group? What goal does the principal have for a healthy school environment? Are teachers on board? This includes fitness, too, so keep that in mind when writing up your statement. Click here for a sample mission statement.

 

Implement “Healthy Classroom Guidelines” for homeroom parents and teachers. Set up guidelines for birthdays, holiday parties, events, etc. Make sure you get your principal’s support before implementing. Other suggestions:

• Don’t be drastic! Understand that parents and/or teachers may not be ready to change overnight. Do not make too many changes that alienate your cause. This is why we suggest “guidelines” so that the school can transition into positive change.

• Present these guidelines to the teaching staff and administration at the beginning of the school year (preferably the week before students start). Let the teachers know that your school is moving towards a healthier environment, and the Wellness Committee is presenting some new ideas for classroom events.

• Notify parents through the PTA about these new “guidelines”. This can be done via your PTA website or a newsletter/flyer that is sent home at the beginning of the school year. Remember that not all parents may want to comply with the guidelines. Until the principal enacts a strict policy (or a teacher sets a classroom policy), there may be parents that choose to follow their own path. Don’t worry! By setting good examples throughout the school, change will happen over time.

• Give fun ideas to parents and teachers. Please click here for some great ideas for snacks and parties in the school (target audience: elementary school).

• Promote non-food events. As our society has promoted snacks and food at every event, it is a good time to start realizing that we can have fun without snacks, too! Help encourage activities that are food-free.

 

Pass on the word to other schools. Do you have a good friend or associate at another school that may be interested in implementing a healthy school environment? Please pass on our email address at contact@realfoodforkids.org and our website address at www.realfoodforkids.org. We would love to visit there, too!