This time last year, at a network-wide professional
development day, FirstLine Schools (FLS) and its signature program EdibleSchoolyard New Orleans (ESYNOLA) unveiled a new wellness initiative for
FirstLine’s five schools. With a full-time Health and Wellness Manager to
oversee wellness initiative and track progress and a Network Wellness Council
of network-level FirstLine administrators and community partners already in
place, the new FLS Comprehensive School Wellness Initiative was prepared to hit
the ground running.
ESYNOLA collaborated with the FirstLine operations team to
develop more stringent food quality standards and systems for tracking food
quality in our school food program. ESYNOLA also held their first daytime,
parent-only, hands-on cooking classes this year, in partnership with SecondHarvest Food Bank, and all five FirstLine schools held family food events for
National Food Day in October. To inform school food reform efforts, ESYNOLA
piloted a plate waste study at Green Charter School to assess student eating
habits and school food nutrition content. Tulane Prevention Research Center also
got involved in efforts to track student health outcomes, collecting BMI and
Fitness Gram data.
In the spring, the Health and Wellness Initiative brought free
fitness classes to FirstLine students, family, and friends. Running from 5:30
to 6:30, the afterschool offerings included Zumba (Tuesdays at LHA and
Thursdays at Ashe), Yoga (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays at Green), and hip
hop line dancing (Thursdays at Dibert). At FirstLine’s four K-8 schools, ESYNOLA also coordinated
Instant Recess workshops, in partnership with School Health Connection, to
promote increased physical activity during the school day.
All five
FirstLine schools earned the Healthier US School Challenge Gold with
Distinction Award for the initiative’s pilot year, and this is only the
beginning. As FitNOLA partners, committed to helping Mayor Mitch Landrieu move
New Orleans from No. 37 to one of the top 10 healthiest and physically active
metro areas in the U.S., ESYNOLA and FLS’s Physical Education Department are committed
to communicating the importance of eating well and moving more, and providing
examples of how this can be done through a variety of programming options.
Please keep checking back for updates on our progress and enjoy the summer! In the meantime, check out this video of 2nd graders at Green Participating in some Instant Recess:
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