AHS students run health, wellness program for Chicago schools
“Today we’re going back to breakfast,” Lindsey Strieter tells a group of middle school students in the Altus Academy cafeteria.
“Do you remember why breakfast is important?” asks Michelle Reich.
The second- through eighth-grade students answers are, for the most part, correct. “It makes you healthy,” says one student. “It keeps your body strong,” says another. A third student interrupts to ask, “What’s that green stuff?”
Strieter, a clinical instructor in the College of Applied Health Sciences, and Reich, a registered dietitian and UIC alumna, are kicking off the day’s lesson in the UIC Health and Wellness Academy, a program of the college’s physical therapy department that collaborates with schools in Chicago to teach kids about healthy decision-making and encourage healthy behaviors.
Eating breakfast is the focus of the lesson because Strieter and the 13 UIC students running the wellness academy have noticed that this healthy behavior is one many of the Altus students ignore.
The “green stuff,” the kids learn, is the spinach they will use to make a healthy breakfast smoothie.
“The lessons we teach in the Health and Wellness Academy are built by UIC students to address the needs, likes and dislikes of the kids from partnering schools,” Strieter said.