Teachers With Special Training Needed, They Say : Educators Seek Cure for Health Classes
What is more important than health?
Nothing, says the California Assn. of School Health Educators.
To make its point, the 230-member association recently completed an informal survey of health classes in six Southeast-area secondary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which showed that only one in five health classes was taught by teachers with a major or minor in health education.
The survey reviewed the credentials of 58 teachers teaching 153 health classes in seventh and 10th grades at Gage, South Gate and Nimitz junior high schools and South Gate, Huntington Park and Bell high schools. Ten of the teachers had a major or minor in health, the study found. The rest typically had credentials in physical education, science and biology that allow them to teach health without extensive training in the field.
This situation is not uncommon in health classes statewide, said Persida Drakulich , director of the school health program for the state Department of Education. Still, she said, “it is not correct that anyone can teach health.”
Nor is the problem confined to California. A 1983 Carnegie Foundation Report on Secondary Education in America said that “many young people appear shockingly ignorant about their bodies. Alcohol abuse is rising, particularly among youths. Teen-age pregnancies increase . . .. Clearly, no knowledge is more crucial than knowledge about health.”
Unfortunately, the report notes, “too few teachers specialize in health education. Too frequently such courses are assigned to physical education teachers who tend to have very limited background in this field.”
Members of the health educators association say specialized training is essential for teaching the ever-changing and often controversial subjects found in a good health course. Those topics include drugs, abortion, sex education, alcohol, disease, nutrition, family life, suicide, rape prevention and first aid.
“We are cheating the students out of a good health education by not having qualified health-educated teachers,” said association president Pat Norton, chairman of the health department at South Gate High School. Association members said they plan to present their survey to the Los Angeles school board to emphasize the need for more credentialed health teachers in the classroom.
Health is “low on the totem pole” because “you don’t see the results today, and people want that tangible evidence,” said Ric Loya, health department chairman at Huntington Park High and a lecturer on health at several state and private universities. Schools can demonstrate that students have learned to read, add and subtract, Loya said, but cannot show that a student is healthier for taking a health course.
Moreover, he said, “people don’t think of health until they’re sick . . . and they don’t think of health education until it’s too late.”
Teachers Hard to Find
But administrators at Southeast-area schools in the survey expressed confidence in their health programs, arguing that a mature, experienced teacher can teach any subject, including health. In order to provide enough classes in health, they said, it is often necessary to draw on teachers without a major or minor in the field. Moreover, they claimed, health teachers are hard to find.
“You make use of what you have,” said Nimitz Junior High School Principal Frank Armendariz. “If that teacher’s bright, he can teach almost anything.” The health classes do not suffer, he said, because “there’s subject matter that has to be covered, and that’s what’s covered.” Of 41 health classes at Nimitz, the survey reported only four were taught by a teacher with a credential in health.
Carol Gorton, assistant principal at South Gate Junior High, said she looks for “well-rounded, well-adjusted and mature” people to teach the course.
“They can adapt the subject matter or learn it,” she said. Besides, she added, “health teachers are rare specimens.”
Requirements for a health science credential include courses in statistics, chemistry, anatomy, communication skills and multicultural values as well as health counseling, strategies for promoting health, accident prevention, use and misuse of drugs and mental-emotional health.
The assumption administrators make “is that there is no content, no body of knowledge” involved in teaching health, “and that’s baloney,” said Peter Cortese, a health professor and associate dean of the School of Applied Arts and Sciences at Cal State Long Beach.
Although a physical education teacher may be authorized to teach health, Cortese said, that teacher is required to take only one general course on health--the same course required of teachers in all fields.
Although health, like English and math, is a required part of the curriculum from kindergarten through 12th grade in California, no amount of course time is set by law. It is not a requirement for graduation. Of about 380 districts with secondary schools, only 60 require health courses at the secondary level. In the Los Angeles city schools, one semester of health is required in both junior and senior high school.
Credential ‘Limiting’
“There are very few people who would get a health credential because it is extremely limiting,” Gorton said.
Michael Bordie, director of certificated placement for the district, likened the situation in health to other fields, where an English teacher, for example, may be called on to teach drama.
“With the teacher shortage that we are experiencing, it is almost necessary,” he said. “Principals have to look for flexibility.”
The lack of degreed health educators goes beyond the classroom, right up to the school health program in the state Department of Education.
Of four health consultants in the program, director Drakulich said, only she came to the job with a degree and experience in health. The other consultants, each of whom has been with the program more than 10 years, have acquired the necessary experience and training to do a good job, she said, but their degrees are not in health.
The situation in health--district, state and nationwide--does not sit well with health educators.
“We don’t find (administrators) putting P.E. teachers in to teach English,” said Patricia Hill, who retired in 1983 from 31 years as consultant in school health education to the state Department of Education.
Hill, who received the state’s first health teaching credential about 30 years ago, conceded that the state has “never produced huge masses of health educators . . .. How do you get people to major in an area where they may not be able to teach?” she asked. “It’s kind of a vicious circle.”
Thorny Question
As a result, she said, “the question of P.E. teachers teaching health has been a thorny one for years.”
A 1984 survey of health education in 49 districts with high schools in Los Angeles County showed that nearly half offered the course in conjunction with driver’s education, said Gus Dalis, a consultant in health education for the county Office of Education.
From that, Dalis said, it can be inferred that “the driver’s ed people were teaching health.”
Association president Norton said one of the most important parts of her job is teaching decision-making. While teachers from other fields may be able to teach students the facts of health, Norton said, they may be inexperienced in teaching teen-agers how to use the facts to make crucial decisions about their lives.
Norton, who started her career as a physical education teacher, recalled being “stuck into a health class because I had an extra period.” She later went back to college for training in health because she “felt very uncomfortable. I could teach from the book, but I didn’t know other things students needed.”
What they need, said Huntington Park High teacher Loya, is help with such problems as pregnancy and suicide and cancer and other physical ailments.
“I have kids come to me who are afraid they have tuberculosis, who want their parents to stop smoking, who say, ‘I have a friend who’s been raped,’ ” Loya said. “I’m a resource person. Parents call me for help.
“Can a (P.E.) coach go out and talk about rape prevention and substance abuse?” Loya asked rhetorically. “How many science teachers teach about self-confidence and self-esteem?”
Similarly, Loya said, “I’m a great teacher, and I can’t teach Spanish, math or auto shop.”
Need for Sensitivity
Health education, said Shirley Holder Hazlett, director of school health for the Zellerbach Family Fund, a private foundation, “is one of the most complicated subjects that one can teach. “You not only need a sensitive teacher, you need someone who will provide instruction that leads to . . . self responsibility. That’s something that teachers trained in other fields are not really attuned to.”
As for a shortage of teachers with a health major or minor, Hazlett said, about 12 state universities and colleges are turning out health teachers.
“It’s completely inaccurate that there aren’t any,” she said.
If there were a “true commitment to having quality health education in our schools, there are many ways to do this,” Cortese said. “I don’t think schools are interested.”
In fact, Huntington Park Principal Marjorie O’Hanlon has found a way to hire qualified health teachers. The association survey showed Huntington Park with the best record in health credentials: three credentialed health teachers with 12 classes, out of a total of five teachers and 16 classes in the health department.
“We interview a great many people,” O’Hanlon said, adding that health teachers often request transfers to the school.
But Huntington Park High is the exception to the rule.
Asks former state consultant Hill: “Can we afford the health illiterates that are coming out of our schools? Everyone says that health is basic. And yet I guess people think they get it by osmosis.”
