Holly and I returned home today after an amazing 2 days down in New Jersey for the 99th NJAHPERD conference. The fabulous beachside location was not only a welcoming venue for learning; it also provided fresh ocean air during a walk on the beach, an opportunity to see NYC and even some whales made an appearance – all while enjoying a beautiful sunset!
The real treats, aside from our invitation to present three sessions, were the New Jersey hospitality, getting to know some NJ #healthedheroes and sharing our passion – skills-based health education!
Our three sessions included:
- The Case for Skills-Based Health Education
- Mental Health in a Skills-Based Program
- Designing Authentic, Performance-Based Assessments
In this blog post we will provide a brief overview of each session with links to to the slides and handouts!
Let us know your feedback and tell us how we can help you continue to #switchtoskills and advance your #skillsbasedhealthed practice!
“Knowledge alone is not power. The sharing of our knowledge is when knowledge becomes powerful” ~Rich Simmonds
The Case for Skills-Based Health Education
This session focused on providing support for a skills-based approach. We wanted to provide participants with some evidence that can be used to “make the case” for skills-based and then we dove into the components of a skills-based approach. In the PPT, you’ll find 5 reasons for skills-based health education and an overview of core components. We are working on creating a resource that pulls together references and resources supporting SBHE – stay tuned!
Link to PPT slides: http://bit.ly/2oAITHf
Link to handout: http://bit.ly/2oC2WVO
Mental Health in a Skills-Based Program
This session discussed ways to think through functional information for the topic of mental health and ways that you can teach mental health through skills. Since information is not the focus in a skills-based program, we wanted to show how you could take a current topic and align it with skills of the NHES. The handout has valid and reliable resources related to adolescent mental health and also some sites for curriculum ideas and implementation.
Link to PPT slides: https://tinyurl.com/y9prn8o3
Link to handout: http://bit.ly/2FBFhwJ
Designing Meaningful Authentic Assessment
For our final session, we provided guidance on designing authentic, performance based assessments in skills-based health education. We discussed the need to shift to students demonstrating what they can do and apply what they know and this really requires some form of project-based assessment. We also showed how to integrate the NHES with the New Jersey state frameworks to create your unit objectives!
Link to PPT: http://bit.ly/2t29um5
Link to handouts: http://bit.ly/2HQT8QF
Skills-Based Health Education 