Two Teenage Health Teaching Modules:

Teenage Health Teaching Modules (THTM) is a comprehensive school health curriculum for grades 6 to 12. THTM has three primary components: 1) health tasks of adolescence; 2) health content areas; and 3) essential health skills and themes. Health tasks incorporated in THTM include having friends and building positive relationships, recognizing feelings and managing them in positive ways, and protecting oneself and others from use of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. Health content areas include personal health; disease prevention and control; nutrition; alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use; injury and violence prevention; mental and emotional health; consumer health; healthy relationships; community and environmental health; and family life. Examples of health skills addressed in THTM are: risk assessment, self-assessment, communication, decision-making, goal setting, health advocacy, and healthy self-management. THTM also reinforces themes of protection, responsibility, interdependence, and respect throughout the curriculum.

Materials are organized by developmentally based health tasks of concern to adolescents, rather than by content area. THTM is composed of a series of modules, each of which consists of a teacher’s guide with a detailed framework for conducting classroom activities and handouts to be duplicated for student use. Teachers are encouraged to add their own supplementary activities, materials, and ideas. The program does not require a particular implementation sequence, use of a minimum number of modules, or prior training of teachers. All modules are intended to develop five skills: self-assessment, communication, decision-making, health advocacy, and healthy self-management. One of the modules, Aggressors, Victims and Bystanders, focuses on middle school violence prevention.

In a controlled evaluation study, THTM students had a strong, positive net gain in health knowledge. Compared to control groups, THTM students also had a net gain in health-related attitudes and total health practices.

The training will be led by Nancy Emberley.