The health classes at Cherry Hill East have always been a segway to understanding the real life problems and situations that occur or will occur in students’ lives. However, there have been some questions over whether the health curriculum covers enough to address the students’ needs and concerns. While I do believe that the health curriculum does need some adjustments, it does cover all of the material that is required and needed for the students at this school.

Some of the required material in the health curriculum is necessary, such as information about bullying and how to stop it, driver’s education, sexual harassment, drug education, as well as fitness and nutrition. However, the teaching of these topics may be watered down to the point where they can become redundant and students won’t take them seriously, so maybe there needs to be new ways in which the students can take these topics seriously, such as finding real life situations in daily life and the news that can relate to the topics that are being taught in health class. For more on keeping healthy, read this Bone Health Supplements review.

On top of that, there are topics that should be covered in the health curriculum, but aren’t. Health classes should focus more on mental health, learning how to build healthy emotional relationships with people, understanding LGBTQ+ rights and relationships, and microaggressions. In the last few day 5 and 6 cycles before testing, all of the students at East had a class period where they learned about microaggressions, such as what is a microaggression, what to do if you are faced with one, what to do if you are a bystander to one, and the resources you can find at the school that can help you deal with microaggressions. While these lessons were made to be a way to have a positive impact on the school environment, it seems like it somewhat backfired, as students had not seemed to take these lessons seriously at all, and even started joking about it. It also took away from valuable class time that the students needed to work on assignments or to learn material, which caused them to think of these lessons as an inconvenience. So in order to solve that problem without having to take away any of the class time, the microaggression lessons could be a part of the material in the health curriculum, as it would fit into the bullying unit.

Compared to other school district’s health curriculum, Cherry Hill doesn’t seem to be all that different. The Lenape Regional High School District health curriculum does seem to have more of a focus on mental health and building relationships, such as learning how to manage stress, utilizing communication skills to build healthier relationships, good-decision making skills, which is slightly different than the Cherry Hill High School curriculum, and it could also be incorporated into the health curriculum as well.

Overall, while the health curriculum here at Cherry Hill East does seem to cover all of the required material on a surface level, it does need some improvement so students understand how important these lessons are.