Best Practice Forum
March 4, 2003
UCLA Hershey Hall
        
                                  


   Best Practice Forum Final Report:
   Innovations in Education Making Change -- What Really Counts?

• Appendix A: Literature Cited


• Appendix B: Resources


• Appendix C: Participants’ Profiles


• Appendix D: Outreach Flyer and Program with Agenda


• Appendix E: Laura Hemminger’s Power Point Presentation


• Appendix F: A.M. Sarquis’ Power Point Presentation


• Appendix G: Marianne Brown’s Power Point Presentation


• Appendix H: Article for Southern California Occupational & Environmental Health Centers (Newsletter) Summer 2003


• Appendix I: “Principles of Learning”

On March 4, 2003, over forty educational and community leaders from Los Angeles gathered at UCLA’s Hershey Hall for a forum coordinated by the Youth Project of LOSH on “Best Practices” for implementing innovative curricula in Los Angeles public schools.  A report was developed and disseminated among the participants and other educational and community leaders.  In addition, several key school and community partnerships developed or expanded among the participants.  Below is the Executive Summary from this report.  

The report itself can be downloaded for free.

The Congress declares it to be the policy of the United States that a high-quality education for all individuals and a fair and equal opportunity to obtain that education are a societal good, a moral imperative, and (to) improve the life of every individual, because the quality of our individual lives ultimately depends on the quality of the lives of others.

U.S. Congress, 1994 ¹

The UCLA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH) , UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health (LOSH), and Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center (SCEHSC) co-sponsored a one-day interdisciplinary e vent – Best Practice Forum in March 2003 . The Forum was to address the crucial issue of “best practices” for disseminating and implementing innovative curricula in Los Angeles ' public high schools. The intent was to b ring together individuals who are introducing innovative curricula in schools and t o share “best practices ,” lessons learned, and recommendations for adoption of such curricula in schools.

Today there are dozens of innovative curricula implemented in Los Angeles ' public schools – both during school and in after-school classes and clubs – which are teacher/user-friendly, learner-centered, standards-based, and free or at low cost. The Youth Project, one of several occupational safety & health projects of the UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health (LOSH) Program, offers such curricula on workplace health and safety – Safe Jobs for Youth (SJFY) and on how to do peer education – Peer Education (PE). Since 1996, the Youth Project has partnered with high school educators, life-skills and work-experience coordinators, and community-based organizations to provide professional development training (teacher in-service workshops) and technical assistance in the area of child labor laws and young worker health and safety. The goal of the curricula is for teachers to provide a classroom experience that will empower youth to understand and be assertive about workplace health and safety issues they and their parents face.

The statistics demonstrate the need for such training: (1) youth are a vital and increasing segment of our labor force – it is estimated that 80% of high school students will have worked by the time they graduate high school; (2) according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 200,000 teens are injured on the job each year, and 70 die from these injuries; (3) youth are injured at a rate twice that of adults, with 40% of workplace injuries occurring during the first year of employment; and (4) working too many hours can jeopardize an adolescent's academic performance and social development.

Despite these statistics, workplace health and safety information is not widely imparted to youth by their employers. The reasons for this are many, not the least of which is that youth (i.e., those under 18) are perceived by their employers as short-term employees. That is, they are “temporary and marginal” workers who will not get hurt on the job and/or will not tell them if they are.

Public health professionals who are aware of this issue argue that the school is a logical place to educate youth about these issues prior to, or near the beginning of, their first work experiences. Furthermore, curricula on this topic have been developed for middle school- and high school-age children by the LOSH Program and others in the U.S. Widespread school adoption of the curricula is now the next challenge for its promoters.