Blogs - Independent School Health Check

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS? February 2020

Yale Led Team Finds Parents Can Curb Teen Drinking and Driving

Here’s the link: Yale-led team finds parents can curb teen drinking and driving

This article reveals the protective factor that parental influence can have on shaping adolescents’ behaviors regarding drinking and driving. This is topic that we address in the ISHC Survey. Please look at the following summary data from our ISHC National Database. It supports the findings in this research and encourages parents to stay connected to their teenagers with good results.

A look at our database shows that if parents give permission to drink outside of the house, it is correlated with increased DWI.

Students with parental permission to drink

DWI one or more times in last 30 days: Yes 93% No 7%

The ISHC also asks students if they believe that their parents call ahead when they attend parties to check if there will be adult supervision.

When comparing the students’ perceptions of “yes they call” or” no they don’t call” the difference in their reported frequencies of high risk behaviors in the last 30days is instructive.

This speaks for itself. We encourage you to compare your survey results to the above and share them with your school community.

ISHC UPDATE February 2020

Hello, this week marks the beginning of our Spring ISHC Survey Session. We hope that you experience smooth survey administrations and that your reports will be useful to you as you plan your health and wellness programming. The Spring session runs through May 15th. There is still time to register if you wish….our registration form is attached.

It takes about a month to prepare the school community for the survey: students, faculty, parents and your IT folks. If you wish to scroll through the survey you can access it on our website www.independentschoolhealth.com

We look forward to working with you.

Regards,

Rosemary and Peter

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS? November 2019

Please look at this relevant article from the New York Times about how white supremacist groups are recruiting our youth via the internet. It tells a cautionary and instructive tale.

A WARNING TO MOMS OF WHITE TEENAGE BOYS

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/opinion/sunday/white-supremacist-recruitment.html

Joanna Schroeder
October 13, 2019

We also include a diagram which shows APPS TEENS ARE USING….. that pertain to human trafficking.

The internet opens the world to our teenagers: the good, the bad and the ugly. The crime does not take place in the streets. Instead it is being brought into our houses electronically. With platforms via the internet, a trafficker can be sitting in a basement anywhere.

Let’s be informed to keep them safe.

Our newly updated ISHC National Database is yielding some fascinating data for us to use to help us understand some of the protective and risk factors reported by the students. In particular we show the following regarding our upper students computer use. How does your survey data compare to this?

DATA FROM THE ISHC UPPER SCHOOL NATIONAL DATABASE

On a typical school day how many hours do you spend on the social media? 2 hrs or more 52%

Do you have regular contact with someone you met on social media? Yes 23%

Have you been asked for a meeting with someone you met on the internet? Yes 13.7%

Have you been asked about sexual topics by someone you met on the internet? Yes 16.1%

Have you presented yourself on line as being older than you are? Yes 42.2%

Have you used the internet to access data that your parents or school would not allow? Yes 63%

Do your parents trust your use of the internet? Yes 97.7%

Do your parents know what you do on the internet? No 26.4%

Do your parents monitor your use of the internet? Yes 11.7%

ISHC UPDATE NOVEMBER 2019

Hello, We are in the midst of our Fall Survey Session and schools are registering for the Spring Session February 4-May 15^th. We attach a Registration Form for your use . We encourage you to visit our website to familiarize yourself with both the middle and upper school surveys. www.independentschoolhealth.com

The $3,000 survey fee includes the survey administration, addition of 5 of your own questions, a report of Aggregate Results, and Report of Statistical Analysis with a comparison to the national database. Please email or call us with any questions… We would look forward to working with you again.

Warm regards,

Peter and Rosemary

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS? September 2019

This short but informative article from THE WEEK September 13, 2019 cites studies that begin to identify the risks involved with vaping.

Our new survey questions regarding vaping have yielded interesting data. We found that of the 12,808 student count for last academic year, 4,658 self-reported that they had vaped. That’s 36.4%. We invite you to compare your individual survey response rate to this national percentage.

ISHC UPDATE September 2019

Welcome back to school! We hope that you have all had a smooth re-entry. We are gearing up for a busy Fall Semester, the ISHC survey schedule beginning October 8th thorough November 22nd. We are accepting registrations that are submitted at least two weeks prior to your preferred survey dates. Our first year working with Indiana University, Center for Survey Research, has gone very well. The newly formatted, more comprehensive data reports have been met with genuine appreciation. We have worked out the minor kinks we experienced in timing and look forward to your receiving your reports within three weeks from your survey administration. I attach our 2019-2020 Registration form for your use if you have not yet registered. We encourage you to preview the middle school and upper school surveys on our website www.independentschoolhealth.com And, of course, email or call us with any questions.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS? May 2019

The following article by Jessica Flaxman, Shady Hill School, for the KlingBrief from the Klingenstein Center at Columbia University highlights a book about girls and anxiety. Our ISHC National Database includes some comparative data for your review. How does your school’s ISHC data compare?

KLINGBRIEF

KLINGENSTEIN CENTER

TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

OF NOTE

IMPERFECTING A GENERATION

Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls by Lisa Damour

Ballantine Book, February 12, 2019

“There has never been a more academically impressive generation of girls than the young women we are raising today,” says clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour in Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls. Nor has there ever been a more stressed generation of young women: “A staggering 31 percent of girls and young women experience symptoms of anxiety compared to 13 percent of boys and young men.” Despite that fact, Damour argues that stress and anxiety are necessary for achievement, and that girls can learn to manage them both. Damour calls on parents and teachers to seek ways to help girls differentiate among types of stress (life events, daily hassles, and chronic stress); identify what stresses them individually; and take steps to cope with the waves of worry that come with striving and caring about success. Damour paints a positive and empathetic portrait of today’s pressured girls and reminds the adults in their lives “to frame the demands of education in positive, capacity-building terms, because doing so actually changes how our daughters experience school.” Teachers and parents alike can be cautious about the ways in which they implicitly or explicitly praise girls for being overprepared, perfect, or compliant at school. Damour posits that actually conditioning girls to stress – helping them to understand what stresses them and why – and then strengthening them so that they can handle the “weight” they pick up, will serve them better than agreeing with them that they can’t handle the challenges they face.

Jessica Flaxman, Shady Hill School, Cambridge, MA

ISHC UPDATE May 2019

Dear ISHC Participating Schools!

We are now approaching the end of this year’s ISHC Survey session, on May 17th, 2019. This has been a busy year for us. We have added many more schools to the ISHC National Database. In collaboration with Indiana University, we have redesigned the survey and the reports. The new Standard Report format includes much more data than the prior reports. ALL of the survey questions are presented in breakdowns by gender and grade and are compared to the ISHC National Database. The Conclusion section of the report is the real gem! It identifies those survey questions where your school shows a statistically significant difference when compared to the ISHC National Database. These differences serve as a valid and reliable basis for your analysis and follow-up actions with your school community.

For those schools who administered the ISHC Survey this year we attach an evaluation form. Please take a few minutes to fill it out and return it to us. We depend on your feedback to improve our survey and the reports. We also attach the ISHC Registration form for next academic year. Please send it in as soon as you can arrange your most convenient survey date. We can then send you a contract and secure your survey date.

We hope you have a rewarding Spring semester…we know it will be busy!

We look forward to working with you,

Rosemary and Peter

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS? Let Children Get Bored Again

Let Children Get Bored Again
by Pamela Paul

There are so many sentences we wish to quote in this article:

“The ability to handle boredom, not surprisingly, is correlated with the ability to focus and to self-regulate.”

“It’s especially important that kids get bored – and be allowed to stay bored – when they are young.”

“Nowadays, subjecting a child to such inactivity is viewed as a dereliction of parental duty.”

“Because there is nothing better to spur creativity than a blank page or an empty bedroom.” Lin-Manual Miranda

Here are some related stats from the ISHC National Database: It makes one wonder if our students have downtime or have experienced boredom. It might be good to ask them that?

After school hours do you have time to read for pleasure | None 74.5%

While I am doing my homework I

Listen to music – 69.4%
Text – 43.8%
On the social network – 40.6%
Instant message – 29.2%
Access the internet – 89.8%
Talk on cell phone – 12.8%
Watch movies – 19%

ISHC UPDATE MARCH 15TH, 2019

Hello! Announcing the ISHC Survey Session for Fall 2019: beginning October 10th through November 16th. Please plan ahead and let us know of your interest in surveying your students in the Fall. A Registration form is attached for your use. Once we receive it, we can send you a contract and secure your survey dates!

We are in the midst of our first year of working with Indiana University, Center of Survey Research (CSR). The schools are receiving our new, improved report format. It includes Part 1: Aggregate Results and Part 2: Statistical Analysis (including a PDF for use in presentations).