Creating Classroom to Community: Health Education in Action - a service-learning partnership with Teach for America

This presentation describes the impact of a new service-learning course for MPH students called “Classroom to Community: Health Education in Action.” Despite significant interest in school health, most MPH students rarely set foot in public school classrooms, and few have the opportunity to engage in discussion with classroom teachers about health issues in schools. The course uses Teach for America's (TFA) Teaching as Leadership framework to teach MPH students how to create skills-focused health education lessons for students in grades Pre-K through 12. The course also fosters a contextual understanding about the importance of coordinated school health and community engagement. Teaching skills are developed through a reciprocal combination of reading and discussion of text, experiences in classroom teaching, feedback on teaching, and critical reflection on lessons learned from the teaching experience. As part of the course, MPH students also assist in developing partnerships between schools and local health agencies.

The pilot course enrolled 15 MPH students, plus 15 partner TFA corps members identified as excellent teachers. The course was evaluated using a mixed-methods approach, including pre-and post surveys (for MPH students and TFA teachers), weekly course evaluations, final focus groups with MPH students, TFA teachers, and the students of TFA teachers. This presentation will describe core course components and will demonstrates the course impact on MPH students' teaching skills and also on student health knowledge in the classroom. Findings from this evaluation demonstrate the importance of service learning in developing core health education competencies.