Fairhaven Middle School Gets Healthy

             Fairhaven Middle School recently participated in Superintendent Greg Baker’s Fitness Fridays, as a way of promoting healthy habits.           

Superintendent Baker is new to the Bellingham school district and wanted a fun, healthy, way to get to know the community. Baker came up with the idea of having Fitness Fridays, which meant every Friday he would go to one of the schools in the Bellingham school district and do an early morning jog or physical activity with the school. Baker encouraged not only students, but teachers, parents, and anyone in the community to come out and take part of the activity. Afterward, Baker would go and spend the whole day with the school and try and get one on one time with each classroom.

            Fitness Fridays started on Sept. 24 and went through Oct. 29 because of weather conditions. Baker’s original plan was to just spend all day at each school on Mondays or Fridays, and then Baker came up with his Fitness Fridays plan. There were only four schools lucky enough to be part of Fitness Fridays and Baker has had so much positive feedback that he might start it up again in the spring time when the weather gets better he said. There were anywhere between 10 and 40 people at each school, Baker said.

 “I wanted to promote a healthy lifestyle for the staff and anyone else in the community and school,” Baker said. “This was a very good, informal way to meet with the community.”

Fairhaven Middle School was one of the first schools to be part of Fitness Fridays. Baker came to Fairhaven Middle School before school started and encouraged everyone to join him on a 20 minute jog around the school and the neighborhood. Principle Michelle Kuss-Cybla was one of the participants. Since the jog took place before school, there were not a lot of participants since most of the students ride the bus, which was not a surprise to Kuss-Cybla she said.

“I thought this was such a great way to get to know the school and the community, Baker even turned off his cell phone while at the schools to really put his time and energy at the school,” Kuss-Cybla said. “Kudos to him!”

This is not the only thing Fairhaven Middle School has done in the past to promote a healthy lifestyle for the students, staff, parents, and community members. The school has its own garden where the students learn to grow their own food, and they get taught about organic foods and healthy eating habits Kuss-Cybla said.

“The purpose of the garden is to get the culture of the garden into the school,” Kuss-Cybla said.

They also have a program called Farm to Market where the school got a grant to get organic food from around Fairhaven sent to the school so the students have healthy options when they eat at school. A project that could be in the works is a greenhouse for the middle school. Kuss-Cybla said that as of right now, parents, staff, and the communityare seeing if it would be a good project to take on. If the project gets approved, the greenhouse project will start in January.

Fairhaven Middle School took part of Fitness Fridays as a way to promote healthy habits, this was only one of the many things the middle school has done to promote healthy habits, and there is still more to come.