Hello everyone!

Our names are Carolyn and Mytchel and we are excited to say that we have been given the opportunity to participate in a pilot program with the Four Directions Aboriginal Student Center this year with Queen’s Health Outreach. Located on campus, the Four Directions Center is a place devoted to teaching and celebrating the Aboriginal heritage. At Four Directions, we had the opportunity to work with several local high school students, learning about and exploring Aboriginal culture.

Diabetes is an ongoing problem in the Aboriginal community, so our role with QHO has been to educate students at Four Directions about diabetes prevention, treatment, and complications. We approached this topic by generating discussion with the students about how the customs related to Aboriginal culture are applied to the prevalence of diabetes. We also implemented activities to encourage critical thinking about risk reduction strategies that can be incorporated into traditional cultural practices.

Working with students at Four Directions was a rich opportunity for cultural exchange. It is our hope that QHO and Four Directions will be able to maintain this relationship for years to come!

Mytchel & Carolyn 

Hi all,

Our names are Mytchel and Nicole and we teach once a week in the KCVI Street Smart program located in downtown Kingston. The students in this program are working towards completing their high school credits and there are a variety of different students attending each week. During the fall, our lessons were very discussion-based as this is what worked best for the students. We have presented on a range of topics regarding health promotion, including Healthy Eating, Drug Use and Marijuana. In this class, we are able to tailor the discussions to their own personal lives and stories that they share. The teacher, Trina, is extremely knowledgeable about the personal lives of all of her students and is able to offer insight and input that allows the students to stay focused and on-track. So far in the winter semester, we have taught lessons on Physical Activity and Healthy Relationships. For part of our lesson on healthy relationships, we had a list of attributes that described healthy and unhealthy aspects of a relationship – and had the students categorize them and explain why they put it in each category. We then talked about consent, signs of abuse, and what to do after a sexual assault and incorporated local resources. Our future lessons plans include topics such as Pregnancy and Contraceptives. We have really enjoyed teaching in this classroom and think that each student has something unique to learn from our Queen’s Healthy Outreach. We are very appreciative of Trina for allowing us to teach in her classroom and for her on-going support! 

Mytchel & Nicole

Hi everyone!

We’re Madeleine and Hudson and we teach a grade 7/8 split class at Frontenac Public School every Wednesday right after their lunch break.  It is always exciting to see the students run in after their break, and it is sometimes a challenge to try to get them all settled and ready for the lesson.  As a class we have discussed at length substance use and abuse, including alcohol and drug abuse and the effects of smoking.  This seemed to be the topic the students were most interested in.  We have gone over both physical and mental health, and what defines a healthy relationship.  We have done this mainly through a discussion-based lecture, playing games, and showing videos.  Moving forward we plan on starting our sexual education unit starting tomorrow, which should take the next few weeks.  One of our goals going in to the year was to try to develop our students into taking their next step into high school.  It has been great to see the level of personal growth each of our students has gone through so far. At the beginning of the year some of the students were shy and did not raise their hands to answer our questions but now we regularly hang out and talk with the first students in from lunch.  Later this month we are planning on having our outreach day, where we are going to take the students outside of the classroom for some bowling.  Time has flown by and we cannot believe we are down to our last couple of lessons.  We are both really happy with how our classes have gone this year, as we feel the students have grown and learned lots, and so have we with them.

Madeleine and Hudson