Schools are important places for kids to learn about how to be healthy, but the learning is not limited to what happens in health class, what they are offered for school lunch and what they learn in P.E. class. Kids learn about how to be healthy by watching important adults in their lives, including their teachers and other school staff, from other students in the school, and by the incentives and rewards they receive in school.

A “Do what I say and not what I do” approach doesn’t work any better in schools than it does in families! Believe it or not, students notice their teachers’ behaviors. A teacher who chooses to go for a walk during a break, or bikes or walks to work, is teaching all the students who observe or hear about their choice that being active is a good thing. A teacher who skips meals and drinks a soft drink at their desk for lunch is teaching their students that taking time to eat a healthy meal really isn’t that important, even if the health textbook says that it is. When I was in high school, two of my favorite teachers smoked; I knew that because I saw them smoking in the teachers’ lounge.

Somewhere along the way, we realized that for kids to truly learn that smoking is an unhealthy habit we needed to make our schools smoke-free.

Any parent will tell you that kids learn a lot by watching other kids. In my school-based research I often try to introduce new foods to students by having in-class taste testings. It is always interesting to observe how the class turns to the “cool kids” to see how they will respond to the new foods.To the extent that schools can foster healthy habits through policies that support health, the entire school environment can change. If soft drinks are not available in vending, there is no option for peer leaders to show that drinking a can of Coke is cooler than drinking water or skim milk.

Kids also learn about preferred health behaviors through reinforcements and rewards. When my children were in school they received coupons from a pizza franchise when they achieved a reading goal. I’ve seen teachers pass out candy bars when kids finish their tests. These practices are not only providing more opportunities for kids to eat less healthy foods, but they are also reinforcing that we reward ourselves, continuously, by eating treats.

In some research that my team conducted in the Twin Cities area, we found that a small number of policies at the school level were related to the weight of students in the schools. We found that schools that limited access to foods and beverages in the classrooms and in the hallways, that did not use foods as incentives and rewards for good behavior, and that did not use foods as fundraisers had students who, on average, were at a healthier weight as compared to students attending schools with more lenient practices.

So, as we think about ways to make our schools healthier places for our kids, we need to open our eyes to the subtle ways that we teach our kids about how to be healthy.

Leslie Lytle is co-director of the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project for Albert Lea. She is a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and a national leader on childhood obesity. She is working with area schools to look at ways to improve the health of Albert Lea children.