From washing hands regularly to avoiding sugary drinks, it’s never too early to begin thinking about personal health.
Experience UGA, a program coordinated by the University of Georgia’s Office of Service-Learning, designs its second-grade trip to do just that: introduce students from the Clarke County School District (CCSD) to healthy habits while giving them a glimpse of student life at UGA.
“Experience UGA’s second-grade field trips help students identify the importance of their physical and mental well-being,” said Aiyana Egins, Experience UGA coordinator. “Throughout their field trip experience, CCSD students learn how to speak kindly to their peers, interact with exercise in fun ways, and become more aware of nutritious meals. This helps students not only engage with each other in a positive way but also identify practices that can be successful in maintaining their overall health.”
Experience UGA’s mission is to bring every CCSD student from every grade to UGA’s campus for an engaging and educational field trip every year. The program is led by UGA student ambassadors and volunteers, and it partners with dozens of units, schools, colleges and organizations across campus, so CCSD students experience a new aspect of the university with every visit.
The second-grade trip partners with the College of Public Health and the Ramsey Student Center, where students host an immersive health fair and discuss the importance of maintaining personal hygiene to battle germs, choosing healthy drinks over those filled with sugar, and who to talk to whenever they see or experience bullying. CCSD students also enjoy games to learn about heart health and the importance of staying active.
“We tie public health to their curriculum and reiterate the importance of wellness through fun games and activities,” said Heather McEachern, undergraduate student services director with the College of Public Health. “The second graders get to explore Ramsey and go wild and see all the fun stuff in the gym. It’s a great experience and it lines up with their curriculum.”
Each Experience UGA trip is designed to connect topics and experiences at UGA to the CCSD grade-level standards. For second grade, the trip focuses on several health standards, including comprehending health promotion and disease prevention, making healthy decisions, and analyzing how influential family, peers, media and technology can be in affecting personal health.
“We want to start building an ‘I can do this’ mentality,” said Ria Chokshi, an Experience UGA Ambassador and third-year student studying health promotion from Johns Creek, GA. “We try to instill that into every single grade level, but at a young age, they still need that little push towards the right direction to better their health for their own future and their community’s future. They will hopefully take these lessons and tell their families, which can hopefully change the community for the better to have healthier lifestyle.”
Chokshi is serving in her second year as an Experience UGA ambassador and said she first discovered the program by volunteering with the second-grade trip. She said she plans to pursue a career in dentistry, creating a connection to this trip; when kids understand the importance of avoiding sugar and brushing and flossing, they will prevent expensive and invasive treatments down the line.
Nikita Shah, a graduate student from Lawrenceville, GA, pursuing a Master of Public Health in health policy and management and disaster management, volunteered with Experience UGA this semester and said the experience was a fun and energetic way to start the day. Shah remarked on how easy it was to introduce younger students to public health topics in a fun format.
“I think providing simple public health and health promotion behaviors is a great way to translate public health into practical interventions that elementary students can take in and remember,” Shah said. “Connecting local students to UGA’s public health program and volunteer opportunities is a huge opportunity to bridge the two spaces.”
Experience UGA Inspires Students of All Ages
For CCSD students taking part in Experience UGA, the field trips are designed to leave a lasting impression on their education and their connection to the university. But Experience UGA has made lasting impressions on UGA students as well. Second-year ambassador Kearston Shuler, a third-year health promotion major with a minor in social work from Donalsonville, GA, said she was choosing between three areas of study before she joined Experience UGA: professional sports-focused physical therapy, gynecology and pediatrics.
“When I was in high school, I had always wanted to work at a daycare as an after-school job, but openings were never available, and I never got the experience of working with large groups of kids,” Shuler said. “The second-grade trip allowed me to work with children of all backgrounds and connect with them, and it ultimately has led me to want to work with children more. Once I entered the program, it pushed me to want to be a positive influence in younger children, and I thought that there was no better way of becoming that than being their pediatrician.”
“We are delighted to offer UGA hands-on experiences that connect to their current majors,” Egins said. “Through these experiences, our hope is that every UGA student will walk away from the program with newfound skills that can transfer to their academic and future careers.”
