- Educator Resources>
- WSCC>
- Practice
Practice
What is Best Practice?
Best practice is a set a guidelines that have been shown to be the most effective for a certain effort or desired outcome. Children’s encourages the use of best practice to support program design and implementation.
Recommended Assessment for WSCC Implementation
The ASCD has developed an assessment tool that can be used to determine efforts related to school improvement. The survey takes about 15 minutes and helps to identify strengths and weaknesses in the following areas:
- School climate and culture
- Curriculum and instruction
- Leadership
- Family and community engagement
- Professional development and staff capacity
- Assessment
- Ability to provide and sustain a whole child approach to education across all aspects of the school experience
Evaluation
Evaluation is an important aspect of implementation that often gets overlooked. Continuous evaluation of efforts can help to provide support for the work that has been done or help to demonstrate a need for efforts.
How You Can Evaluate
Community health needs assessments, which are typically done by a local health department, can help provide useful data for schools and districts related to health needs in the community.
Asset mapping is a tool that can be used to determine what resources are available in the community so that efforts can build upon what is already happening.Using established assets within a school or community can help to make efforts more efficient and effective.
How Children's Has Evaluated
The interviews focused on several key topics related to WSCC implementation within a school and were conducted either in person or via phone.Interview questions covered the following topic areas:
- The wellness coordinator role and trainings
- Familiarity with WSCC model components
- Available supports for implementation
- Needed supports for implementation
- Activities that support health and wellness
- Wellness plan development and review
- Outcomes related to health and wellness activities
- Barriers and challenges to WSCC implementation
- What does WSCC implementation look like
- Using data to inform program improvement
This process was used to determine if and how WSCC implementation complements or overlaps with other health and wellness initiatives in schools and neighborhoods in the following areas:
- Academics
- Student development
- Family and community
- Health and wellness
- Educational enrichment
- Recreation and athletics
- Student clubs and groups
- Miscellaneous programs
Schools are asked to identify a target or goal in an area of nutrition and health education, physical education/physical activities, and a third area to be determined by the wellness committee based on the results of the ASCD survey results.
If you have any questions about the WSCC model and how it is used to inform programming at Children’s Wisconsin, please contact healthykids@childrenswi.org.
