After our session on health and wellbeing we were asked to watch and reflect on two videos.
The first being a documentary on hidden sugars and the detrimental effects it can have on your health. I think this is something really important for practitioners to understand as it can be easy to encourage children to eat or drink the wrong things if we don’t know where these hidden sugars are. I think that as teachers we also have a responsibility to offer a conflicting argument to what the food industry is brainwashing children. Especially since it is not all about obesity, a child can appar to be of perfect health whilst sugar is slowly having a devastating effect on them. As a nation we tend to be quite ignorant of this. A comment was made in the documentary about sugar being the tobacco of today. I personally found this extremely frightening. to think that in half a century we could look back at our sugar habits in the same way we view smoking habits now. Something needs to change.
We were also asked to watch Suzanne Zeedyk’s video. Which explores the lasting effects children’s relationships and experiences can have on their brains. She considered the idea that if a child is used to living in an abusive home their brain will always be looking for the next threat. This has a lasting effect because when they are in school for example, their brains still continue to constantly look out for the next threat. Which leaves little thinking space for actually learning and concentrating. As practitioners we need to be extremely aware of how much home relationships influence the behaviours of young children. We must be able to adapt to each child’s needs and consider every child’s circumstances. Children must have a wide range of experiences, this will depend on how they react to the environment they’re in. As teachers we must be aware that each child’s attention span will be different and for a multitude of reasons so we must be able to differentiate our lessons appropriately. perhaps the most important message I took from this video was purely to be mindful of the fact that as a teacher, I could be the first friendly face a child sees each day.
