School Gardens help to extend the classroom beyond traditional settings by expanding it outside. Gardening can provide students with hands-on learning opportunities while increasing environmental awareness and vital experience in problem-solving.

School nurses play a crucial role in children’s health. They give preventative, educational, and emergency aid for students. With the many services school nurses provide daily, more and more nurses are looking to technological advancements to help manage their daily tasks and to enhance student health.

Sending your child to a sleepaway Summer camp can be unsettling, especially if they have never been away from home before. Parents worry that their child will be homesick or exposed to situations that can mentally and physically challenge them.

Summer and sunny weather is here! However, summer is not the only time a child needs to be protected from the sun, and every child needs sun protection. Damage from exposure to UV rays builds up over time, so sun protection should start at an early age. It is essential for teachers and school staff to model sun safety and create an environment where there are sun-safe policies integrated with health education and practices. Teachers and administrators should recognize the importance of sun safety and create an environment that communicates these practices and sun safety education.

CBS recently covered news on the School Nurse shortage as a part of their “School Matters” series, and some are calling this a growing national crisis. They say “only three out of five schools across the country have a full-time school nurse... often forcing school administrators, with no medical training, to step in and provide some level of care.”

Technology is an intricate part of most of our lives, especially in the lives of our teens. Teens are checking their social media more than ever during the school hours and it’s likely a trend that won’t go down anytime soon. While schools may not be able to control how students use their phones at home, they can regulate how much they are used at school. Even though there is not a 100% guarantee you will stop kids from using devices like phones and tablets during class, there are ways that schools can cut down on unnecessary screen time during the school day.

Family issues, bullying, homework, and even world news are just some of the many triggers that can attribute to increased stress in a child’s life. Experiencing stress at an early age is common and normal, but too much stress can have negative repercussions on children’s health. Even though there are some stressful situations in life we can’t control, having “supportive relationships with adults as early in life as possible can prevent or reverse the damaging effects of toxic stress”. Here are some stress relief activities that can be implemented at school or at home to help reduce childhood stress:

Handing your child a phone, an iPad, or some other technology device to keep them entertained has become an easy fix for parents. Even though this solution may seem practical at that moment, it can have a lasting negative impact on children in the long run, if parents are not mindful. Children and teenagers between the ages of 8 to 18 years, spend an average of 7+ hours per day looking at screens.¹ Too much recreational screen time for children can impair their sleep and it attributes to poor cognitive development, affecting their overall health.²