Dignity Act Protects the Mental Health

Jeffery Alger is an experienced athletic director of health and physical education who has worked extensively in North Tonawanda and the NY area. As a teacher of young children, he has completed training with the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA) to provide a safe environment for young people that protects their mental health.

DASA was first introduced in 1999 but wouldn’t be effectively signed into law until the early 2010s. Since then it has been a source of teacher training to emphasize the need for students to be taken seriously when problems related to bullying, discrimination, or harassment arise in a school environment. The act’s reach and the protection it provides is wide-ranging, applying not only to obvious school environments like the classroom but also on the school bus or even over electronic communication that takes place at school. Even out-of-school behavior might fall under DASA if it is having a significant negative effect on a student or students.

Training in DASA involves learning to see the students’ concerns as legitimate and to understand the things that young people do when distressed - things like faking illness to avoid school, declining grades, low self-esteem, etc - so that they can be discreetly addressed. Understanding signs that a child has been bullying others - disrespectful behavior, aggression, blaming other students, etc. - is also crucial to make sure the problems that arise at school are examined from both sides. Placing the pressure on the victim of bullying to do all the emotional work of dealing with a bully is unfair, as is punishing a bully without trying to understand why they became that way in the first place. DASA does not teach the adults in school environments to punish children but instead to support them and create a safe environment.

Physical Inactivity Puts Children Worldwide at Health Risk

Jeffery Alger is an athletic director certified by the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association based in Webster, NY. Physical education (PE) forms the basis of Jeffery Alger’s work in the North Tonawanda school district.

Research shows that a lack of physical activity has a direct relationship with a person’s risk of developing both physical and mental disability later in life. Despite the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, the WHO’s recommendations for adolescents are largely not being acted on worldwide. Global analysis shows that roughly 80 percent of children at school do not meet the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity per day, nor are schools doing much to help them reach that goal. Especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, most children are not active enough.

There are other factors involved as well: for example, research by the Utah Women and Leadership Project shows that only 14 percent of school-age girls are meeting the recommended amount of physical activity. Boys and young men are generally slightly better off when it comes to engagement in PE due to teachers enforcing a culture of masculinity that associates competition with worth, but beyond that roughly half of all students are spending 2-5 hours a day either watching television, playing video games, or doing homework (or, increasingly, taking classes online). If the current generation of schoolchildren are to grow up healthy, and we are not to see a new health crisis emerge in their adulthood, more must be done to ensure children meet the minimum requirements for physical activity in their adolescent years.