Health Class

About Health Class

The Cotting School Health Curriculum promotes healthy development for students with significant and multiple disabilities. It focuses on healthy choices in the areas of nutrition, relationships, and safety.

Good nutrition is vital to good health and is absolutely essential for the healthy growth and development of children and adolescents. Cotting uses the FDA recommended guidelines to present information to students about healthy food choices and portion sizes. This is reinforced in our family-style dining room that provides adult support according to students needs. We use the Circles Curriculum, developed by Leslie Walker-Hirsch, MED and Marklyn P. Champagne, RN MSW and published by James Stanfield. This curriculum is designed specifically for students with disabilities. It presents abstract concepts in a concrete manner. The connection between the kind of relationship and the corresponding level of intimacy is demonstrated visually, making learning this important content area easy for students. It is designed to help our students “see” social distance.

Students learn relationship boundaries and relationship-specific behaviors. The role of mutual choice among individuals is emphasized. We supplement all of the curriculum materials with our own materials designed to meet the individual learning needs and goals of our students.

We also emphasize the important role family members and caregivers play in helping students to make healthy choices in nutrition, relationships, and safety.