Style: October 05, 2018

82 STYLE | education
Standing TALL
With the Life Education Trust celebrating 30 years of its health and wellbeing programmes
for children, we thought it time to ask why Harold the Giraffe has had such
long-term success and understand what goes on inside those iconic mobile classrooms.
Words John O’Connell
New Zealand children face considerable challenges
to their wellbeing and health. Children report more
experiences of bullying behaviour than students from other
countries and we have the highest rate of youth suicide in
the OECD. In terms of physical wellbeing, many primaryaged
children take part in a range of sports and active
recreation opportunities, but our children also have high
rates of obesity.
Promoting wellbeing for all children and using proactive
approaches (prevention) when they are younger is
more effective than later intervention when patterns or
issues may have become more entrenched. Primary and
intermediate schools are vital locations for promoting
wellbeing and fostering the competencies and strategies
children need to manage their wellbeing at and beyond
school. To help youth and adolescents overcome these
issues, Life Education explores five teaching strands:
food and nutrition, human biology, relationships and
communities, identity and resilience, and substances.
While Life Education is not a compulsory part of the
school curriculum, schools engage it to help develop key
competencies in the New Zealand curriculum – managing
self; relating to others; thinking; using language, symbols and
text; participating and contributing.
Life Education visits primary and intermediate schools
(years 1-8) in the Canterbury region, travelling as far as the
Hurunui to Rakaia regions for annual or bi-annual visits.
Children will participate in two to three lessons in one of
the three mobile classrooms, which are usually on site for
one or two weeks, relative to the role size of the school.
Children attend 1000 hours in their own school classroom
each year, so the unique environment creates a stimulating
learning experience to capture children’s imaginations and
help them to engage with the taught material. Towards
the end of school term in December and occasionally
during school holidays, educators will conduct a session
for preschool children (without the classroom), but will of
course take along Harold!