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The MTS Health curriculum has been designed to build on skills and concepts along a continuum from first through eighth grade. Various topics are introduced in early primary years, then reintroduced in more depth and sophistication at various points in the student’s education at MTS.
The binding concept of decision-making processes spirals throughout the issues and topics under discussion. The objective of this approach is to enhance the student’s ability to recognize that a decision is involved in a particular situation, to predict the possible consequences, and to make a decision based on his/her personal value system. Ultimately, the decision may be about drinking and driving, sexual behavior, personal hygiene issues, or eating choices. Decisions made by people who are confident and familiar with personal values will more likely lead to positive choices.
In the early years, a class spends one to two weeks discussing each topic on an introductory level. As students grow older, time spent on each subject increases, and by the middle school years, the major topic is yearlong. Information presented is factual and includes issues that are less clear-cut, which evoke some fairly lively discussions.
Lower-grade students discuss a variety of topics, including disease prevention, personal safety issues, drug safety and smoking, and self-esteem. Fourth graders focus on First Aid and emergency responses. Fifth grade is a time for learning about learning styles, brain mapping, and emergence into adolescence and puberty. The sixth grade investigates diets, nutrition and eating disorders, and seventh graders are presented with information about drugs, including alcohol. The focus for the eighth graders is a sex education program.
Throughout the year, health teachers present opportunities and exercises designed to help the student discover the decision-making process, define personal value systems and develop ways to enhance self-esteem. Some topics obviously lend themselves more easily towards these goals than others, but students at each grade level incorporate them into their experience.
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