Jessica's Reflection

Obesity is an enormous problem in our society and it is only going to get worse.  I believe that to truly make a change and stop the swelling waist lines we must start by educating the children.  If we can encourage them to create healthy eating and exercising habits at a young age they will continue with them for the rest of their lives, as well as influencing their own children to be healthy.  I originally picked this topic because I thought that nutrition was the only factor influencing obesity.  Although I still think that it is a major factor, I also believe that a lack of physical activity is leading to the growing epidemic.

In my field placement at River Valley Charter School the children have to bring lunch from home everyday.  From what I have observed they all bring healthy lunches with fruits and vegetables.  Some do eat junk food snacks but for the most part they all eat very healthy.  If this is the case at home, which I'm assuming it is since their parents pack their lunches, why are some children still overweight?  In my opinion it is a lack of exercise and physical activity.  If these children just went outside to play I feel like it would make a huge difference.

For my service learning project I worked with the children in my class.  In Newburyport there is the clipper city rail trail, which is an amazing walking, jogging, or biking path that runs through Newburyport and ends at the Merrimack River.  My cooperating teacher wanted to set up a partnership with the rail trail in which the students could contribute to it's upkeep every year.  I helped contact the people in charge of the trail and set up a day on which the children could clean some of the litter off the trail.  I then walked with the class to the trail and helped them in the clean up day.  It was amazing.  They were all so excited to make the path beautiful for the people who wanted to use it and loved being able to contribute to it's upkeep.  Many said that they used the trail with their families and enjoyed walking along it.

After completing this service learning it was awesome to see how much the children loved keeping the trail beautiful.  I found it fascinating that so many of them walked along it with their families and used to to exercise and get outdoors.  Helping the class create a beautiful place in the community for people to exercise was an amazing experience.