“Lori not only helped me update one of my health education units, but she reminded me of why I became a health teacher!”
Health Teacher, NYS AHPERD Conference, November 2022
Services Lori provides to assist in the development of Health Education/Wellness Programs include:
- Revising your health education lessons/curriculum to be skill-based with age- and developmentally-appropriate health content
- Evaluating your current district curricula and wellness programs
- Creating and/or updating district policies and documents for wellness curriculum and programs (including backwards design and guidance documents)
- Ensuring updated terminology and content is in your health education program
- Implementing program evaluations for your needs
- Developing wellness policies aligning with your community’s needs
- Working with educators, administrators, and families to ensure the best curricula and programs are provided to children and youth
Services Lori provides for Professional Learning and Development within schools include:
- Updating health education curriculum including infusing Mindfulness and the Growth Mindset practices
- Transitioning to real sex education lessons supporting consent and healthy personal relationships
- Creating student-centered lessons and assessments
- Evaluating and revising assessments in Health Education Classrooms
- Supporting Personal Learning Communities
- Revitalizing Wellness Educators in the K-12 Setting
- Staying positive and effective during hybrid and online teaching/learning
Contact Lori through email at: superhealthcrusader@gmail.com OR pubertyprof@gmail.com
You can also complete this form: Contact Lori
Click here for her recent consulting work regarding Consent and Erin’s Law!
A fun fact about Lori – Since early in her career, Lori recognized the many dimensions of health and wellness. And, when teaching children and youth, the acronym SMEEPS or SMEEPS OF is taught for students to easily recall these dimensions:
Social – Mental – Emotional – Environmental – Physical – Spiritual –
Occupational – Financial
She has also been teaching about the Growth Mindset (how stress is a part of life and can empower our growth) and Mindfulness tools for almost 20 years!
Why should you ask Lori to help your school strengthen its Health Education program?
Lori’s experience includes teaching health education to all grades in the K-12 school setting. This makes her unique in which not only does she conceptually understand how to teach students within different grade levels, she actually taught these grade levels. This hands-on experience strengthened Lori’s ability to develop and strengthen standard-based units, as well as student-friendly standard-based assessments.
Lori was also a district health coordinator for two New York school districts. Being a school administrator further allowed her to assist health and physical educators in using “best practices” to support students’ wellness. This included ensuring that all schools were teaching mandated topics, like safety skills. Click here for her recent consulting work regarding Consent and Erin’s Law.
What recent projects has Lori worked on?
Lori’s most recent projects include:
- Working with the American Embassy in New Delphi, India: Passionate educators have consulted with Lori to ensure best practices are utilized in their school. Specifically, health education units were strengthened to have skills as their base with the infusion of age- and develomentally-appropirate functional health knowledge.
- Reviewing the 3rd Edition of the National Health Education Standards: Lori was a member of the Expert Review Group for these revised standards. Check out this edition here.
- Feedback on Skill-Based Units: Lori provided feedback for other Health Educators who created skill-based lessons for middle school teachers. Request more information from Lori about her ability to help school districts.
- Revising Chicago Public School’s Sexual Health Education curriculum in grades K through 12: This revision work included one health education standard (skill) being focused upon within specific grade levels. Her consulting also included ensuring Erin’s Law was supported within all grade levels. The Scope and Sequence for this project can be found here.
- Being the Health Education Expert with Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction: This consulting project included collaborating with proactive school health educators in creating skill-based units and authentic assessments.
- Completing intensive Mindfulness training: In addition to learning helpful mindfulness techniques, Lori successfully completed coursework focusing on mindfulness practices in the PreK-12 school setting through Mindfulness Schools.
- Presenting to other health education professionals and agencies at state, national, and international conferences on how to teach standard-based health education: Her last national presentation was titled “Accessing Reliable Resources for Bullying Prevention/Intervention While Advocating for All!” and occurred at the Annual National Conference for the Society of Health and Physical Educators in Tampa, FL.
- Assisting health teachers, as well as other educators and administrators, in creating proactive schools with strong Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). Truth be told, school health educators have been teaching SEL for years due to many of the SEL facets being the same as our National Health Education Standards. Check out these two pdfs for how Health Education and SEL go hand in hand:
What else demonstrates Lori’s passion and expertise in Health Education?
- Originally, Lori thought she would go into the medical field to help cure people’s illnesses. Yet, upon meeting people who were HIV+ during her undergraduate coursework, she realized her passion for preventing illnesses and teaching people how to be empathetic to others. This led her to complete her training to become a licensed school heath educator and begin her K-12 teaching career.
- When working as an adjunct instructor at two universities, Lori’s students told her she needed to work with more future health teachers due to her many years of PreK-12 teaching experience. So, in 2011, Lori started her doctoral work at Texas A&M University and completed her degree in August 2013.
- Lori wrote a book for adults on the common questions children have asked her about puberty titled Common Questions Children Ask About Puberty: Insights from a nationally recognized health education expert. She also co-authored a book on lessons health teachers can use in the middle and high school school settings.
- Lori’s dissertation focused on interviewing parents of children in grades 3, 4, and 5 regarding their early sexual health conversations with their children. Due to her findings, including parents noting the need for tools to talk with children, she created the “Puberty Chit Chat Cards,” as well as other discussion card sets, to help start or continue family conversations. These “Chit Chat Cards” were expanded upon and made into the TALK Puberty App.
- Lori created instructional video clips for school health educators within a former university position. One example includes High School Health Course Outline (1 Semester) . This short video clip (4:59 minutes) provides an overview of how she developed one high school course using the “backwards design” method (Understanding by Design).
Click here for her recent consulting work regarding Consent and Erin’s Law!
Lori’s Academic Awards and Recognitions include:
Nominated for the Eagle Teaching Excellence Award 2014-2019 by numerous students, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (2014-19)
Faculty of the Year Award, Eagle Sport, School, and Life Yearly Awards from the Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (2018)
Most Accessible Award Nominee, Students Advocating Potential Ability at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (2017)
Residence Life Faculty Member of the Month (September), UW-L Residence Halls of The Month (OTM) Chapter,National Residence Hall Honorary (2016)
Health Education Professional of the Year, New York State Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (New York State Award) 2011
Health Education Professional of the Year, Society of Health and Physical Educators (formerly SHAPE) (2010)
Health Educator of the Year, Eastern Division Association American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (2009 )
Health Educator of the Year, New York State Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (2007)
Health Educator of the Year, Nassau County American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, NY (2004)
What topics has Lori presented on for schools and other professionals?
Due to Lori’s extensive experience, she has presented many times on the “best practices” in health education and specific health concepts. Titles of presentations have included:
- Supporting the Social and Emotional Health for Children and Youth
- How Trauma Impacts Children’s Brains
- How to Teach Standard-Based Health Education while Supporting Your Students’ Values
- Using Backwards Design in the Health Education Classroom
- Skill-Based Health Education Assessments
- Mindful Living in Ten Minutes a Day
- Embracing Stress (Eustress) and Coping with Distress
- Assertive Communication Skills
- Empathy Training
To talk with Lori about possible collaboration and consulting work, email her at superhealthcrusader@gmail.com or send a comment through this website.