The Movement is a culture change that promotes healthy lifestyles and provides an amazing opportunity for employees to not only improve fitness for themselves but also model wellness for students. The Homewood City School Mission Statement is “empower each student to reach his/her own unique potential”. Students can only be empowered if employees are empowered. The result of employees and students focused on wellness is improved on the job performance for employees and improved academic performance for students.
The SOS/FIT employee wellness program started five years ago with Spin classes available for students during school and employees of HHS after/before school hours. Year two of The SOS/FIT program expanded to include a system-wide employee wellness program designed to promote healthier lifestyle choices for employees in the Homewood City School System. Year three of the SOS/FIT program exploded to include a wider variety of choices and a new slogan, “The Movement”. Year four of The Movement continued to expand including a total 3.2 YEARS of continues exercise as reported by the Patriot Point Challenge, Bham Business Journal's Healthiest Employer Award and expanded programming. Teachers who focus on personal health, model those behaviors for students and empower students to succeed. Students are now registering for local races, coming to school early and staying late to focus on fitness and improve wellness. The connection between academic performance and physical fitness is well documented in Dr. John Ratey’s research-SPARK . Since the inception of our employee wellness program we have experienced several areas of “profit". The Return On Investment (ROI) from The Movement can be measured in several areas such as school climate improvement, reduced absenteeism and improved performance in the classroom.
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