Hamilton Township teachers had an unusual option available to them on their last professional development day of the school year on June 4.
To students, professional development days are just random days off peppered throughout the school year. But for teachers, they are workdays, set aside for attending workshops and seminars and taking on board new methods of instruction.
For the June date, the Hamilton school district partnered with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton to offer workshops and seminars with a focus slightly off the norm: health and wellness for educators.
So on June 4, teachers were given the option to go to the RWJ Fitness and Wellness Center on Quakerbridge Road to one of the most important things a teacher can learn: how to take care of themselves.
More than a hundred teachers split across two sessions took part in the day. Health-care professionals from across the RWJBarnabas Medical Group offered workshops and seminars on topics like meditation, healthy cooking, yoga, exercise, preventative self-care and skin care. Participants could even opt to get a chair massage.
RWJ set up information booths where teachers could stop to learn about a variety of health and wellness matters on their way between workshops. Each teacher also received a “passport to wellness” to keep track of their progress on the day.
On the day of the event, RWJUH Hamilton vice president of health promotion Diane Grillo said that RWJ and superintendent Scott Rocco were in conversation for months to plan the day out.
“Dr. Rocco had a vision and a philosophy. He knows that teachers have stressful jobs,” Grillo says. “He wanted to find a partner for a day when teachers could just take care of themselves. For a person in my position, that was just so engaging. I haven’t seen any other school district focus on their teachers like this.”
Grillo says she sees this as a jumping off point for RWJ to offer this kind of programming more frequently, and not just to teachers but also to everyone in the community.
“Our job is not only to restore the health of the community but also to preserve it,” Grillo said. “That’s what happens in the Fitness and Wellness Center, and that’s why we had this event here.”
Lisa Breza, chief administrative officer of RWJUH Hamilton, echoed those thoughts in a media release. “We know this event will help further develop relationships and demonstrate RWJUH Hamilton is here for our community, our teachers, students and their families, not only in emergencies and times of illness and disease but also as a resource for the overall health, wellness, and well-being of our community members,” Breza said.
