Oct. 4, 2022 —The pandemic disrupted California students’ lives at home and at school, including their physical and mental health.
To help California teachers address the physical education and emotional support many students were unable to access during the pandemic, the University of California Office of the President has awarded CSU Channel Islands (CSUCI) Associate Professor of Education Kara Naidoo, Ph.D., with a $572,750 grant to support a project entitled "CSMP One-Time Learning Acceleration Funds."
“The grant allows an increase in services to students and teachers throughout the state,” Naidoo said. “The project will allow for more mental health instruction and there will be more work done with physical education. We’re going to look into many areas of health education and physical education and see how to best support students and teachers. This is really to compensate for the interruption of learning that happened due to the pandemic.”
Integral to the project is Executive Director of the California Physical Education-Health Project, Dianne Wilson-Graham. She is in charge of the entire statewide program and leads it from an office on the CSUCI campus.
Wilson-Graham will coordinate closely with the CSUCI Education faculty to support California teachers’ professional development in the areas of physical and health education that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Schools have recognized these additional needs,” Wilson-Graham said. “The physical education minutes required in schools were removed, therefore, no one is surprised that concerns for mental health problems have increased and no one is surprised that students’ level of physical fitness activity is down, and no one is surprised that students are having more challenges socializing with their peers, teachers and others in the learning environment.”
This grant will enable the California Physical Education Project to reach out to more teachers and school leaders, particularly in underserved areas. Wilson-Graham stressed that the project will be heavily reliant on the expertise of the CSUCI Education faculty and other faculty across the state.
With input from the faculty members, Wilson-Graham and Naidoo are holding various workshops programs for K through 12 teachers at CSU campuses around the state that focus on mental and physical health, developing classroom conflict resolution systems and helping students with their perceptions of themselves when it comes to physical movement, to name just a few examples.
The goal, Naidoo and Wilson-Graham explained, is to make sure every student in the state is where they need to be physically and emotionally so they can ultimately succeed with all parts of their education.