By Clare Halpine
Dayvon enters the room, a polite young man in grade eight, with a great smile. He shakes my hand and sits down in the yellow plastic chair for the interview. “It’s not really an interview, more of a conversation,” I try to reassure him, but he is a confident young man in high school now, after graduating from grade eight this past Saturday. Dayvon, and other students from grades six, seven and eight, are here to tell me about their experience taking the teenMEN and teenFEMM health curriculum.
It wasn’t easy talking about all the body parts in class, but with maturity, Dayvon says, they all got through it. “It got easier as the lessons went on.” The biggest takeaway was learning about the three pillars of health: exercise, nutrition and sleep. You need to eat more protein, eat less sugar and drink more water, instead of soda or energy drinks. Energy drinks hurt your body. And now I get 8 hours of sleep each night instead of six.” Since taking teenMEN, Dayvon is trying to cultivate better habits, as he explains that “the brain is still growing and developing” in adolescence and so “I read now and try to be on my phone less, especially at night, since the blue light of the screen interrupts your sleep.” Dayvon got into a good high school, which he attributes to his newfound health habits. “I needed to expand my brain and engage with people in-person, to develop that social side of myself,” he says. These days, he even goes for walks with his family, not just for exercise but to be outside and spend more time in-person. This was part of a checklist that he did in the teenMEN class, tracking his habits for a week: types of food he was eating, how much physical activity he was getting, how many hours of sleep each night and the hours he was spending online (phone, tablet, TV, computer) versus time spent with close friends and family. Once he realized how many hours he was spending online, he said he initiated the family walks. “You initiated the family walks?!” I ask, impressed. “Yes, m’am. And we go out to dinner together as a family now, too.”
Danea is a student in grade seven. She enters the room in a leopard print shirt and a huge bright smile. She has long eyelashes and even longer gem-studded nails that tap on the table as she looks off in the distance to remember things. She said the hardest part of teenFEMM was the first class, as she thought they were going to talk about sex. But once she realized it was about health, she and the other girls “kind of calmed down a little bit.” She laughs when she admits that she and the other girls were shocked to learn that the female body has three holes. “I did NOT know that before teenFEMM.” She was also shocked to learn the size of an egg in the ovary: about the size of a grain of salt. “That was really amazing to just realize.” Denise didn’t know anything about hormones or that her menstrual bleeding was related to her hormone levels throughout the cycle. “I learned to chart as the teacher gave us information about bleeding, which you track as red, and yellow and blue are the colors for sticky or slippery mucus.” For now she just uses the paper chart that she was given in the class but she might use the FEMM App someday. “It helps me know when my period is coming but also to just feel more comfortable in my body.” She wants other girls to take teenFEMM as she thinks it will help them, too. “They don’t know what’s going on and they think they could just get pregnant. But when you learn teenFEMM you realize that you can know your body and you can make good choices.”
Jacob is the last interview of the day, and his shocking curly hair matches his energetic personality; his whole upper body sways from side to side as he describes his experience with teenMEN. At first, he says, he felt confused, “because, I was like, oh, I never knew that” and then he was “flabbergasted ‘cause, like, dang, I didn’t know that. And now I get to learn about all this stuff! Like about how small our cells are. And how hormones work. And how my body works.”
Jacob sounds like a paid promoter, despite the fact that he’s in grade seven: “teenMEN changed my whole mental and physical health,” he says. “Definitely. A hundred percent. Before teenMEN, I used to stay up ‘cause I was watching TV. Now, I learned to set a timer for my phone, and then I wind down with a shower a little earlier, go to sleep and then wake up early. If I get enough sleep, my body will feel good. I won’t be grumpy.”
A recurring theme from students is: “I didn’t know I could do anything to help my body.” Of course, every parent and teacher will tell you that they have told them they should eat healthier, exercise, pay attention, spend less time on their phone, etc. But, teenFEMM and teenMEN gives students a convincing WHY they should change their health habits. For example, if asked, most students will say that they want to get taller. What’s the biggest thing you can do to support your body’s healthy growth? Eight to ten hours of sleep! The curriculum teaches students about how most of the body’s hormones (including growth hormones) are produced during sleep. So, eight to ten hours is the necessary time needed for the body to “clean house” and do its growing and repairing. Suddenly, students understand that far from boring old “nothing”, lots of things are happening during sleep and they need to clock it.
When it comes to food, many adolescents don’t particularly care about healthy food. They like pizza and burgers and fries and candy. But, many adolescents do care about being good athletes. Again, teenFEMM and teenMEN provides research through easily relatable case studies explaining how nutrition and sleep impact mood, memory, speed, the body’s ability to recover and repair muscle faster, etc. Suddenly, packing a sandwich doesn’t sound so lame.
The teenFEMM and teenMEN curriculum is full of facts that inspire students, providing a sense of awe at the incredibly complex and powerful interplay between the human brain and hormones. The curriculum also addresses interior versus exterior stressors, and ways to help them not only cope but build long-term resilience to stress. As Jacob, our paid promoter will tell you: “teenMEN and teenFEMM will tell you all about how you should treat your body because some kids don’t know this stuff about the human body. You could use your phone to look it up or you could get teenMEN and teenFEMM to come to your school. It’s very nice and it would help a lot.”
To protect the privacy of students, all names were changed for this article.
