Wynard gives talks at American School Health Association conference

Tammy S. Wynard, North Central College visiting instructor of health and physical education and coordinator of health education, presented twice at the annual American School Health Association conference in San Antonio, Texas, Oct. 10-13. The conference brought together professionals working in higher education, K-12 schools, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as pre-service teachers and school nurses.

Wynard’s first session was titled “Inoculating your Mental-Emotional Health Unit with Happiness.” She focused on providing participants with concepts from the Positive Psychology field to help health teachers or college instructors effectively implement a health lesson that goes beyond just teaching about stress, anxiety and depression to focusing on the full emotional spectrum. Existing teaching activities and resources were provided.

The second session was a roundtable presentation on using “Google Maps as an Avenue of Mapping and Identifying Connections for Future School-Community Collaborations.” Wynard summarized and provided instruction for those in higher education of how pre-service school health students enrolled in North Central’s Community Health class are divided into county teams and taught how to use Google Maps to research and report about community agencies. Students in the class virtually present their findings to their peers who evaluate their work related to county demographic data and criteria for school-community connections.

Wynard joined North Central’s faculty in 2011. She earned a B.S. in community health education/speech communications from Illinois State University and an M.S. in school and college health education from Indiana University.