Landing and Launching: 101 Checkins and Checkouts: Installment #8

14 Tattoos

Preparation time: Five minutes

Materials: A variety of fake tattoos and a small bowl of water for application.

Procedure:

(a)    Place fake tattoos in center of circle

(b)   Instruct participants to select three tattoos; one for how their day went, one for how they want tomorrow to be, and one for a hope for their future.

Alternatives: As a feedback exercise, have group members by consensus select a tattoo for each member. This can occur at the end of a day long retreat or as a seasonal shift activity.

Notes: Although this is generally a low risk activity, there are some cultures which forbid any sort of body adornment. American culture has come a long way in accepting tattoos. They are now more common than not but to quote the man who taught me to be a river guide: “If you must err, err on the side of caution.”

15 Student make own cards

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Materials: Old magazines, 3x5 cards, glue sticks, scissors (one pair per person)

Procedure:

(a)    Have the laminator ready

(b)   Instruct participants that they are going to make their own set of permanent check in cards using old magazines.

(c)    Cards should reflect feelings that most group members can connect to.

(d)   Distribute old magazines and scissors and 3x5 cards.

(e)    Instruct students to lay out their card designs.

(f)    Then and only then distribute glue sticks.*

Alternatives: You can easily bring this activity up to the computer age by doing it on computers.

Notes: I have had some of my most creative and revealing cards emerge from this deceptively simple project. What a student may not be able to voice they will sometimes put on a card. Less mature students may want to put up pictures of scantily clad women or alcohol. In this case I tell them that they are free to make those but they will not be part of the permanent group set.

*I have discovered through experience that if you give out glue sticks at the beginning students will immediately start plastering images on cards. Waiting for glue sticks will encourage them to be more mindful.

16 COLOR SWATCHES

Preparation time:

Materials: Absolutely Free! Go to your local hardware store and ask for all the color swatches you can get. You can use pieces of construction paper but there is a much more infinite variety of shades of color at the hardware store.

Procedure: Explain that historically colors have represented different primary human emotions. Although it may be redundant you may want to use the following list:

(a)    Red: Anger

(b)   Blue: Sadness

(c)    Green: Jealousy and Envy

(d)   Yellow:

(e)    Brown:

(f)    Black

(g)   White

(h)   Purple: Higher consciousness

Explain further that emotions generally go on a scale of intensity.

Lay out the colors in  a spectrum from lightest to darkest. For example, a pale shade of pink represents only mildly angry whereas dark pulsing red represents rage

Notes: Different cultures may have different connotations for different colors. For example in one culture red represents unity because red is the color of blood no matter what color skin you have

Integrated School Health Tip#7: Sugar Mamas and Sugar Daddies

Nope. Sorry. This is not that rich man you were hoping to find on match.com or the gorgeous female widower heiress who has suddenly taken a liking to you. These are real people who are part of a real problem: childhood obesity.

If you work in schools or other institutions that serve youth or live in a neighborhood with kids you have met these people. She is the teacher with the great big jar of candy on her desk or the counselor who hands out mountain dew as part of the counseling session. I used to look at these people as relatively harmless. They just wanted to make kids feel good. Sugar tastes good. Sugar makes kids feel good. What's the problem?

Now I see sugar mamas and sugar daddies as part of the problem.

It seems so innocuous. It's hard to connect that friendly face handing out soda pops and candy bars to a lifetime of diabetes and all its complications but that's the way we need to start seeing these people. The statistics are in. Over 350,000 people die from obesity related causes. This is second only to tobacco with its approximately 450,000 victims.

From a strictly behavioral standpoint rewards are a bad idea. It reduces children to the status of dogs being trained to fetch a ball.

"Rewards are no more helpful at enhancing achievement than they are at
fostering good values. At least two dozen studies have shown that people
expecting to receive a reward for completing a task (or for doing it successfully)
simply do not perform as well as those who expect nothing (Kohn, 1993)."

 

Of the many ways to change behavior, punishment and reward are the least effective. Our overflowing prison systems are ample evidence of this. I still remember an incident from my own junior high experience back in 1975. I was sitting on the table in the cafeteria. A male teacher walked by and told me to get off the table.Like a good teenager I did so until he left. As soon as he was out of sight I sat back on the table. He came by two more times and each time I was sitting on the table. After the third time he marched me to his room and gave me a "hack." For the uninitiated, a "hack" was a legal form of physical abuse back in those days.In my school it was the males who administered this abuse.They took great pride in their prowess and each had their own special wooden board. You generally were forced to grab your ankles and then endure at least one swat with a wooden paddle.

This changed nothing for me. But I did learn to keep a wary eye out for that teacher in much the same way I would watch for the school bully.

 

Rewards and bribes are just the flip side of punishment. They elicit the same range of emotional responses.Kids who do not get a reward while others do endure the same level of shame and embarrassment as does the child who is publicly punished.

 

This is all well known psychology. I am not making news here.

 

I hear a variety of rationalizations from the sugar mamas and daddies. One person tells me she does it so kids will come into her office and talk to her. In my over 25 years of youth work I have never had to bribe a kid to come into my office with anything. I have always had a steady stream of young clients. Another teacher explains that if he doesn't have his soda reward system he can't get the kids to do anything. I have a radical response to this now. I used to be more tactful.

If you have to bribe kids with soda or candy to get them to do something, perhaps you should consider another profession.

In my years as an alcohol, tobacco, alcohol and other drug counselor I am always asked what I consider to be the gateway drug. I inevitably point to the pop machine. Pepsi and Coke, not marijuana and cigarettes are the original gateway drugs. They set up the brain's reward centers for addiction on multiple levels. If you doubt this, think about what happens when alcoholics quit drinking and smokers quit smoking. Their sugar intake increases. They revert to the source addiction.

 

You may know my thinking by now: With the lifetime of health risks and misery obese children will endure I see sugar mamas and sugar daddies as just different types of dealers. If we feel a need to contribute to their diabetes because of our own lack of skills we need to rethink everything, perhaps even the entire school system but that's a longer essay.

The Wild Wild Wild West of School Lunches #6: Corn Dogs

Yesterday I thought I'd take a chance and eat school lunch. Most days at this particular school the offerings are actually somewhat healthy. But when I wandered into the kitchen I was greeted by the sight of an enormous pan of corn dogs.The idea seems fun, perhaps even sound. A hot dog dipped in corn batter seems innocuous. I love cornbread. I love healthy hot dogs.What harm could there be in that? It it was just cornflour and meat, it might be okay but like the rest of our industrial supply things are never quite that simple. I quickly changed my mind about partaking of the school lunch. On the way of the kitchen I spotted several boxes that the corn dogs had come in.

I became curious.

Making sure nobody was looking,and sneaking around like a thief, I secreted the contraband box up to my office and started reading.This is what I found. This is the complete ingredient list:

Enriched flour:( wheat, malted barley niacin iron, thiamine mononitrate) ,ribolflavin  folic acid sugar, yellow corn,Enriched degermed yellow corn meal:( yellow corn meal, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate), riboflavin,folic acid, Sodium acid pyrophosphate.Soybean oil,Salt,Egg yolk,Potato flour,Egg white,Dried honey,Artificial flavor,Fried in vegetable oil

Chicken

Mechanically separated chicken

2% or less corn syrup solids,

 potassium lactate: , sodium lactate, spices, sodium phosphate, sodium diacetate, flavorings ,sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite: 

CONTAINS WHEAT SOY EGGS AND GLUTEN

Hmmm.

In addition to having an inherent mistrust of "brown" food I have come to wholeheartedly mistrust  the food substitute  known as "mechanically separated chicken." Years ago when I was evolving into an enlightened omnivore I ate chicken sausage because I thought it presented a healthy alternative to beef. Eventually, however, I started  wondering what "mechanically separated chicken" looked like. I envisioned an entire chicken going into the poultry industry equivalent of wood chipper beak first with feathers, beak and feet included.

I wasn't that far off.

Mechanically separated chicken is all that stuff left over after the chicken has been butchered. It's ground into a paste and various fillers and binding agents are added to make it appear to be meat. But by law it cannot be labeled as meat. Another mystery solved. If you've ever eaten a chicken leg, think about all the various parts that are meat like (gristle and small bones). That's the stuff that goes into your corn dog, Mcnuggets and almost all other industrial chicken products.

So that's the "meat" part of your school's corn dog.

With my personal guidelines on reading labels I quickly discarded the notion of enjoying a tasty dog: With a product like corn dogs, the first two ingredients should be something like meat and corn flour. For the intrepid epicurean, however, I took the time to research some of those strange sounding names in the ingredients list. I noticed that the manufacturer (eating note: when you refer to a food supplier as a manufacturer rather than a grower or farmer, take caution) took great pains to highlight Wheat, Soy, Eggs, Gluten which might actually be the healthiest part of that tasty treat. These products are highlighted to warn people with allergies and intolerances to those substances. Strangely the manufacturer felt no need to warn us all about five different types of salt in their product.

For the curious, here are some of the highlights of what I found:

sodium nitrite: "The jury is out on how harmful these substances are. Sodium nitrite reacts with stomach acid and other chemicals in the stomach to produce nitrosamines, which have been shown to cause cancer in animals when consumed in large quantities.

Sodium bicarbonate "contains a large amount of sodium. If you are on a sodium restricted diet or have high blood pressure talk to your health care professional before taking sodium bicarbonate."

Sodium acid pyrophosphate :
Ingestion:
Causes irritation to the gastrointestinal tract. Symptoms may include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Phosphates are slowly and incompletely absorbed when ingested, and seldom result in systemic effects. Such effects, however, have occurred. Symptoms may include vomiting, lethargy, diarrhea, blood chemistry effects, heart disturbances and central nervous system effects. The toxicity of phosphates is because of their ability to sequester calcium.
Skin Contact:
Causes irritation to skin. Symptoms include redness, itching, and pain.
Eye Contact:
Causes irritation, redness, and pain.
Chronic Exposure:
Chronic ingestion or inhalation may induce systemic phosphorous poisoning. Liver damage, kidney damage, jaw/tooth abnormalities, blood disorders and cardiovascular effects can result.
Aggravation of Pre-existing Conditions:
Persons with pre-existing skin disorders or eye problems, jaw/tooth abnormalities, or impaired liver, kidney or respiratory function may be more susceptible to the effects of the substance. 


Yummy!


I don't wish to bore you with all the grim details of the rest of the ingredients but I encourage you to research one or two and see what it does to your body.Post your findings in the comments section. I tend to shy away from ingredients that include the word "pyro." Isn't that slang for someone who like to set fires? "Phosphate?" Isn't that the stuff in laundry detergent that causes all the problems in our water supply? Why is there so much salt? What does "degermed" mean? Enriched" means that they take all the good stuff out and put other stuff in.I don't know. Maybe I just have too many questions.

But let's end on a positive note. It is possible to enjoy a healthy corn dog.