Today, during the Super Fitness Field Day at Reid Ross Classical Middle/High School, the Cumberland County Schools (CCS) and the Greater Cumberland County Sector Partnership announced a new student wellness program. MATCH Wellness, Inc., will provide the Motivating Adolescents with Technology to CHOOSE Health™ (MATCH) Program to all seventh-grade students in the school system.
MATCH is a school-based interdisciplinary approach to wellness, and it empowers adolescents to make healthy choices by focusing on nutrition education and increasing physical activity. Created by a North Carolina teacher to work within the current school day, MATCH integrates wellness themes into lessons and activities taught in healthful living, science, math, language arts, and social studies.
“We are excited to partner with MATCH Wellness, Inc., to provide our students with information and resources that will help them develop healthy lifestyles,” said Dr. Mary Black, the acting superintendent of CCS. “As a school system, we are committed to investing in the needs of ‘the whole child’ and providing our students with the tools to be successful in the classroom and beyond.”
As part of the program, participating schools will receive ready-to-use lesson plans, student workbooks, Cornell Notes and teacher keys. Additionally, students will have access to the following incentives: water bottles, pedometers, and drawstring bags. MATCH officials say this partnership represents a value of more than $370,000 annually to the school system in program delivery, at no cost to the schools.
MATCH is aligned with Common Core and Essential Standards and is based on social-cognitive and self-determination theories. It is a web-based curriculum with real-time data management for evaluation. Fitness testing, health behavior and other health data will be available to measure the success of the program. The program will begin in all CCS middle schools in the fall.
“This program benefiting our youth marks the first big win for the Greater Cumberland County Sector Partnership and falls under the partnership’s first initiative to address obesity prevention and wellness promotion in the greater Cumberland County area,” said Nedra Clayborne Rodriguez, executive director of the Cumberland County Workforce Development Board, which is facilitating the sector partnership.