The Health Teachers Network

Year 5 Sex education class, lets use guest speakers, be interactive and address real questions from young people.... skip 7 years, VCE Health Class, read chapter 3, answer questions from 2-9... Sense something wrong? Writing this blog for other teachers has personally allowed me to reflect on my current teaching mentality and build my on my pedagogical approach. The last 4 blogs about  Food, Digital learning, Youth Voice and Sexuality  has emphasised the overwhelming potential to not only engage students in their learning, but empower them to do something with it.  Reflecting back to the IVAC model, when creating units large or small it is beneficial to recognise the how investigation can lead to change and action. It is important to note that within your classrooms participation of student's will be ever changing (remember these students have more in their life than your class) as shown in Harts (1994) Ladder example, the many levels of participation. Building a...

'Youth voice' is a remodelling of the term 'youth participation', as teachers, the thought of student voice can raise hairs on the back of your neck when thought of in the wrong context, Friday afternoon, end of a 12 week term, student voice may cause all sorts of anxiety. To reduce your anxiety, the context we are looking at this week is participatory approaches to Health education. Promote students to be a part of, share something, be empowered and take ownership of actions. Participation is more than involvement, it is involvement with connection and influence.  Cheryl Kane's work shop providing fantastic evidence of youth voice in the difficult context of drug education. The idea of students leading conversations and questioning drugs when relating to their own demographic. Tokenism: Adult describes what they would like from a youth perspective. Youth informed/youth consulted: students attend a drug education program with interactive intentions. Youth ...