Steps for Building Healthy School Communities

Explore tools, templates and resources that can help guide you through the 6-step process for building healthy school communities.

1. Prepare

Building a healthy school community involves gaining support of school community members, identifying a health champion and creating a collaborative team who will develop a shared understanding of what it means to be healthy school community.

• Health Champions and School Health Teams / Champions de la santé et équipes de la santé en milieu scolaire
  Understand the roles of health champions and a school health team with a step-by-step process to get your team up and running.
• Student Involvement: An Important Part of a Healthy School Community / La participation des élèves : élément important d’une communauté scolaire en santé
  Learn about the positive impact that student involvement can have within your healthy school initiative.
• Animal Leadership Activity
  Engage students in a conversation about how complex leadership can be, different leadership styles, and how people with various leadership styles can work together.
• Self Assessment Pyramid 
  Help students understand the importance of leadership, recognize their personal leadership qualities, and identify opportunities for building leadership skills.
• Fit in a Life Boat: A Team Building Activity / Tous dans la même bateau (de savetage)
  Help members of your school health team understand the importance of working together to achieve a common goal.
• Puzzle Activity: A Team Building Activity
  Demonstrate the importance of having a shared vision and working as a team to build a healthy school community.  

2. Create a Shared Vision

Creating a shared vision involves developing a common understanding of what makes your school a “healthy school”. The vision should be created with the input of all those involved in the school community: staff, students, parents, and community members.

• Creating A Shared Vision / Adopter une vision commune
  Guide your school health team through a step-by-step process to create a vision. Practical tips on facilitating this process are included.
• Fantasy Island: A Visioning Activity
  Participants in this activity will help shape a vision of the ideal healthy school community by identifying their personal values related to health and happiness.
• Imagine Our Future: A Visioning Activity
  Participants in this activity will discover the many aspects of a healthy school community by walking through a script that allows them to envision their “ideal healthy school community”.
• Project Wish Fairy: A Visioning Activity
  Participants in this activity will explore and share their ideas of a healthy school community to help guide the development of a school health vision.
• Collage a Vision: A Visioning Activity / Une vision en montage: Une activité de visualisation
  Participants in this activity will describe their “ideal healthy school community” by using magazines, markers, paints, or other materials to show their ideas.
• Dr. Cure-All: A Visioning Activity
  This interactive skit helps students to improve their understanding of physical activity, healthy eating and psychosocial well-being and how their school and other environments can support these priority areas.

3. Determine Priority Issues

Completing an assessment of the school community will help you to determine priority issues and to identify opportunities for improving student health and learning.

• Healthy School Planner
  This online tool offers a general assessment of the school health environment as well as specific modules on healthy eating, physical activity, mental health and tobacco misuse. Use the guide to help you navigate the Healthy School Planner. Schools must register online and complete desired modules. Once completed, your school will receive:
  • A confidential report with the results for each module completed
  • Recommendations for how to address the priorities identified in your assessment results
  • A template that you can use to plan actions that will be carried out in your school
• Healthy Schools Rubric /Rubriques Écoles en santé
  A rubric is a tool used to help describe performance using objective criteria. The Healthy Schools Rubric is a simple tool to evaluate the school environment from a health perspective. Results from the Healthy Schools Rubric can help you identify which areas require further assessment and action. In-depth rubrics allow you to dig deeper to identify priorities related to healthy eating, active living, and positive mental health:
  • Healthy Eating Rubric
  • Active Living Rubric 
  • Positive Mental Health Rubric  

4. Develop an Action Plan

Developing a clear and realistic action plan will keep the school health team focused on addressing the high priority issues identified in the school health assessment.

• Creating a Healthy School Action Plan
  Use guiding questions and a template to create an action plan that outlines strategies, identifies resources needed, clarifies decision-making, and lays the groundwork for measuring changes.
  Action plans will look different for every school community.  Here are examples of what could be included in an action plan.
  • Sample Action Plan: Healthy Eating in an Elementary School
  • Sample Action Plan: Student Leadership in an Elementary
  • Sample Action Plan: Healthy Eating in a High School
  • Sample Action Plan: Positive Mental Health in a High School
  • Sample Action Plan: Physical Activity in a K-12 School
  • Sample Action Plan: Positive Mental Health in a K-12 School
     
• Guide for Choosing School Health Resources / Guide de sélection de resources liées à la santé en milieu scolaire  
  By considering a series of questions, this guide can help schools or school jurisdictions choose high-quality health and wellness resources that will meet their identified needs.
• Canadian Best Practices Portal
  The Canadian Best Practice Portal is a searchable database of community projects related to health promotion that have been evaluated and shown to be successful. You may find some great project ideas for your school community in this portal. 

5. Implement and Monitor

Implementing the action plan begins following all of the planning in the previous steps. The school health team will want to monitor activities to ensure that what was planned is achieved on time and has the intended impact. 

6. Reflect, Evaluate and Celebrate

Reflecting on your work and conducting the evaluation activities described in your action plan will provide feedback to the school health team and school community about all that has been achieved. Celebrate your accomplishments!

• Celebrate and Share Your Success / Célébrez vos réussites et faites-en part!
  Learn about the importance of identifying and celebrating the successes of your project, and suggestions on how you can share what you learned with others.
• Tell Your Story: Template for Sharing Successes
  Complete this template to ensure you include all the right details when creating your success story to share with others.