Educating the Whole Child

Abstract

Just teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic today are not enough.  It is sad to say, children face many negative daily challenges, things we would have never dreamed of twenty or thirty years ago. The Whole Child Approach is desperately needed. The whole child approach ensures that each student is healthy, safe, engaged in learning, supported, and challenged, which in turns allows them the opportunity for improvement and continued success. As educators we have vowed to be lifetime learners, we have to continually go back to the drawing board to make sure we are educating our children so that none fall through the education cracks and are left behind.

The society of today is very different than it was when I was growing up. Many things have changed, some for better and others for worse. Children of today have more issues that affect them negatively than ever before. Unfortunately, according to the NCCP, “About 15 million children in the U.S. live in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold.  (www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html) Many children do not even have the bare necessities of life: food, clothes, and shelter.

As grownups, we know firsthand how it feels to try and concentrate on school work on an empty stomach. We know it is very hard and almost impossible at times, then to think of some of the children who come to school hungry every day. A lot of schools have started to provide free breakfast for children at all the schools in my area. If it was not for breakfast and lunch at school some children would not receive a meal.  I would say that is a part of the whole child approach. Receiving the most important meal of the day sure gives the students a boost of energy for their daily activities.

In our reading class, one of our modules included information stating children most at risk of struggling with reading, are often those who are poor and who have parents who are not well educated. Keeping that statement in mind and the statistics we were given by the NCCP, as parents, grandparents, and future educators, our work is cut out for us. Sad to say in this great country, The United States, a lot of our school districts are in low-income poverty neighborhoods.