Placing Students at the Center: The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Model

Abstract

BACKGROUNDStudents are the heart of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model. Students are the recipients of programs and services to ensure that they are healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged and also serve as partners in the implementation and dissemination of the WSCC model.METHODSA review of the number of students nationwide enjoying the 5 Whole Child tenets reveals severe deficiencies while a review of student-centered approaches, including student engagement and student voice, appears to be one way to remedy these deficiencies.RESULTSResearch in both education and health reveals that giving students a voice and engaging students as partners benefits them by fostering development of skills, improvement in competence, and exertion of control over their lives while simultaneously improving outcomes for their peers and the entire school/organization.CONCLUSIONSCreating meaningful roles for students as allies, decision makers, planners, and consumers shows a commitment to prepare them for the challenges of today and the possibilities of tomorrow.

Defining Food Education Standards through Consensus: The Pilot Light Food Education Summit

“…Building from the WSCC model and NHES framework, the PL‐FES constitute a holistic, comprehensive set of standards that can be used across grade levels and diverse school settings. Similar to the NHES, but with a specific focus on food education, PL‐FES are intended to be used as a guide for implementing curricula and developing lesson plans.…”

“…Food education has high potential for success when contextualized within the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model. WSCC combines a coordinated school health approach and the Whole Child Framework to support student health and achievement through policies and programming that are implemented within and across 10 components, including health education. WSCC espouses a collaborative approach to health education by utilizing schools as a key system for integrating health into the day‐to‐day lives of students and their communities .…”

Testing the “Zero‐Sum Game” Hypothesis: An Examination of School Health Policies and Practices and Inequalities in Educational Outcomes

“…Our findings indicate that better parental engagement may be a potential mechanism through which inequalities can be reduced. The importance of student involvement has been noted, with the extent to which students feel involved in the school decision‐making process, and staff‐student relationship quality, associated with better health outcomes . Our findings suggest that emphasizing student involvement in decision making may be particularly important for improving attainment in more deprived schools.…”

Not Enough Time in the Day: A Qualitative Assessment of In‐School Physical Activity Policy as Viewed by Administrators, Teachers, and Students

“…The model depicts an amalgamated approach to education supported by both health and education sectors, and provides an appropriate framework for viewing our findings. The WSCC model highlights the critical need for students to both benefit from and contribute to the interdisciplinary approach by ascribing meaningful roles for students as part of the planning and decision‐making processes, as well as the significant need for community and family resource engagement . Students in our research expressed the desire to be physically active at school attesting to both educational and enjoyment motives, and described a relationship between their ISPA participation and their ability to be proficient learners.…”

“…Only 2 district administrators were represented in this research; future investigations should consider alternate strategies to recruit district‐level personnel. Given the acknowledged role of community in the WSCC model, we further recommend the community be represented in future research, ideally through inclusion of school health council and/or school board members, and local public health department health educators. Finally, determining whether or not the schools that reported having successful ISPA programs were in compliance with state mandates was outside the scope of this investigation; however, the observed lack of compliance among a sample of Mississippi Delta schools in a previous investigation was an impetus for our study.…”