Lincoln Public Schools and their community partners have been working to make strides in keeping our kids moving in the direction of healthy. A need for coordination and facilitation of these efforts was apparent and thanks to grant funding received through Partnership for a Healthy Lincoln, the position of LPS District Wellness Facilitator became a reality in the 2011-12 school year. Now LPS has the opportunity to take best practices occurring within schools and spread these efforts district wide, building policies for sustaining a culture of wellness long-term.
Focus on staff wellness opportunities will be critical to setting great examples for healthy living. Who spends more wakeful hours with school aged kids each day than the LPS staff?
From grocery purchases, to lifestyle choices, to setting ground rules for daily living, families are key players in choices that impact long-term health.
The power of choice only grows each year as students become increasingly independent. Knowledge is a powerful part of students learning to make good choices from lifestyles, to foods and activity. Incorporating good modeling for students and guiding them to solid information about the impact of their choices is a key strategy for helping to build healthy citizens beyond high school.
Thanks to funding from an anonymous donation of $250,000 to the LPS Foundation, a new program entitled the LPS Wellness Challenge will kick off later this fall to support efforts of schools to improve the health of those touched by the school. The donation will fund the program for five years and focuses on creating measurable change in the fitness and health of the populations served by LPS.
You can contact Michelle Welch, Lincoln Public Schools Wellness Coordinator, via email at mwelch@lps.org or by phone at 402-436-1728
As the LPS crew, we continue to straddle the divide, prepping for goodbyes of this year and the hellos of next year.
It’s a bittersweet time. We’ve come to love those who might be leaving our classroom or our school, but we are also excited to see them move on and start their next chapter.
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