MPCSD elementary students SWITCH what they do, view and chew through Extension Office program

Elementary students in the Mt. Pleasant Community School District will be learning about healthy eating, exercising and screen time habits with a 12-week SWITCH program through the Iowa State University Extension Office.

SWITCH - School Wellness Integration Targeting Children's Health - is a program designed to help schools promote healthy lifestyles through school-based wellness programing. It was introduced at Van Allen Elementary School in Mt. Pleasant for the 2017-2018 school year and will be implemented in the Mt. Pleasant and New London elementary schools this year.

Salem, Van Allen, Lincoln and Harlan elementary schools held assemblies on Friday, Jan. 11, to introduce SWITCH to the students. While it is targeted for fourth- and fifth-grade students, the Mt. Pleasant Community School District is using it to teach all their elementary students about exercising, healthy eating and less screen time.

'I'm excited because instead of just fourth and fifth-graders, we're doing it as a school community. Everybody in the building is taking part,” said Lisa Lowery, exercise science teacher at Salem and Van Allen elementary schools. 'We want Salem Elementary School to be healthy and the students can take the healthy habits home to their families.”

Each school receives a $1,000 grant for participating in the program to use for anything health-related, said Erin Heaton, with the Iowa State University Extension Office. Last year, Van Allen's grant money went toward a climbing wall, which they now have in their gymnasium.

At Salem Elementary School on Friday, students learned about 'do,” 'view,” and 'chew.” Students learned to 'do” more physical activity throughout the day; 'view” two hours or less of recreational screen time; and 'chew” more fruits and vegetables. They finished the assembly by doing a cha-cha slide before each student headed back to class.

On their way back to the classroom, students got to taste dried cherries and put a sticker on the wall that said whether they 'tried it,” 'liked it,” or 'loved it.”

Students at Salem will be starting each Friday for the next 12 weeks with student-lead 'fitness Friday” in the gym.

'Getting kids active in school is not the hard part,” Lowery said. 'Viewing is the most challenging.”

Anne Martin, fifth-grade teacher at Salem Elementary School, said they did a lot of physical activity in the classroom before SWITCH. Implementing the program reminds her to incorporate exercise into all her lesson plans.

'Get them up and learning,” Martin said. 'And I've changed my mind-set to think about how I can reduce screen time in the classroom.”

Martin said her fifth grade class learned about word 'avocado” during a vocabulary lesson last week. One of her students didn't know what an avocado was. She wants to use moments like that to introduce the students to new, healthy foods.

Tiffany Boecker, the lunch coordinator at Salem, said that school lunches will follow the SWITCH guidelines for healthy foods.

'Hopefully, we can get something going as far as what's healthier and better for the kids,” Boecker said. 'They were pretty excited about the (dried cherries) today. They did a good job.”