There's something very broken about the health class requirement for high-schoolers in Michigan. I feel so naive; I went in thinking that my daughter's experience in health class would lead to...better health. I knew the first day when her first assignment came home that we were doomed.
They don't spend time in class doing healthy things. There's no meditation demo. There's no sampling of healthy foods. There's no yoga, no stretching. There's no 20 minutes of each class trying out something that could actually make them feel better in their bodies.
Rather, there are a lot of assignments in health class. The teacher and the principal claim the class is one of the most academically challenging. The assignments are actually easy for students who are healthy and who are skilled in regurgitation. Make a poster that explains the eight different kinds of health. Learn the names of all the major bones and muscle groups. Watch a crap TV documentary that demeans a fat kid and his family and blames the food industry for their problems. Watch a short that talks about the complexities of the organic food industry but give a quiz that offers only binary choices for answers. Measure your waist and calculate your weight and belly measurements as an indicator of your over all health. For the student who already has bad body image, bad sense of self, and takes things literally, it is utter hell. It's not an academic class; it's a capricious and emotionally draining class.
After we suffered through most of the first quarter, we dropped. The school didn't provide a way out so we created just stopped going. Apparently the Michigan personal curriculum offers a way out by allowing certain substitutions for health credit. I'm not sure what we will do. Interestingly, there is an abstinence only option because of the sex ed component and there are alternative assignments for the more triggering body mass assignments if you know to ask for them. Why a health class designed for high school students contains triggering body mass assignments in the first place just kind of blows my mind. Personally, I have no problem with sex ed and welcome it, but it needs to come from a place of authority and trust. I don't think the public schools can offer that. Maybe the problem is thinking that they can do the work of health departments and family doctors. Imagine if your family doctor's office put together a six-week class for teens... And what if there was one designed specifically for teenage girls on the spectrum? A mom can dream.