Healthy lifestyle promoted to youth

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 11

Healthy lifestyle promoted to youth

Educating young people towards a healthy lifestyle and talking through the problems of drug abuse is the new job for a Christchurch teacher who has been appointed to the Life Education Centre. Ms Andrea Wilson is the first teacher to be appointed to the Life Education team. She will begin her job in April, after a three-month course at the Life Education Centre in Sydney. The Life Education programmes began in Sydney, where children aged from primary to secondary school visit the centre annually. Through visual displays and discussion they are encouraged to develop healthy and positive lifestyles. In Canterbury Ms Wilson will initially be working from a mobile classroom travelling to the schools.

She welcomed the philosophy of the programme, and said it was important to begin the programme with young children.

“We'll be enabling young children to care and understand about themselves,” Ms Wilson said.

“By high school, bad patterns are too often set, children received misinformation, and it’s too late to change.” Working with groups of children and also with parents was important, she said.

Teachers would be provided with information they could use for followups with classes later. Ms Wilson has taught sciences at Burnside High School and is also a qualified speech and drama teacher. Recently, she has

worked for a biotechnology company. She is a keen sportswoman interested in running and water sports. Mr Trevor Grice, the national director of Life Education, said groups which supported Life Education ideas had been set up “everywhere from the West Coast to Nelson.”

The groups were made up of parents, nurses and teachers, and others who were interested, he said. The groups would be approaching schools in their areas to see if they wanted visits by Life Education teams. “Individuals, families and groups can deny problems with drug abuse but the signs that it exists are there — in violence, burglaries or the road carnage,” he said. Mr Grice told of one country meeting he had attended where everyone denied knowledge of drug use or abuse in their town.

“However, the undertaker’s wife told me after the meeting that her husband was burying one teenager a week as a result of traffic accidents or other violence,” he said.