The Statewide Online Tobacco Prevention and Intervention Teacher Training Project created in the 2010-2011 school year was based on findings and recommendations from the School District’s course for Palm Beach County teachers. The Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) stated, “as a leader in Florida with establishing online tobacco prevention teacher training, Palm Beach County has laid the foundation to create a statewide online component in support of the funding priorities.” Therefore, in June 2010, the FLDOE asked The School District of Palm Beach County to offer a “Statewide Online Tobacco Prevention and Intervention Teacher Training” course to all 67 school districts in the State of Florida. The 2014-2015 school year will be the 4th year for the statewide program. After teachers complete the content portion of the course, they are provided grade appropriate lessons in three core topic areas: Health Effects, Refusal Skills, and Media Literacy. They are then required to teach six lessons, two under each of the core topic areas. They can receive up to 60 in-service points once they have completed the course, including teaching the lessons.
The mid-year report by W. William Chen, Ph.D., CHES, Department of Health Education and Behavior, University of Florida, and his colleagues, concluded that teachers who took the course and their students demonstrated statistically significant improvements. Teachers’ pre and post course surveys measured knowledge gained. The student assessments measured the impact that the teachers’ online training has on their students regarding changes in knowledge about tobacco hazards, media influences over tobacco use, and refusal skills in the 2010-2011 school year. In 2012-2013, 1007 participants enrolled, and 426 participants completed the course. There were 18,650 students across the state that received tobacco prevention lessons. Plans to enhance the course are underway, including expanded topic areas and extensive social networking promotion, updates, and communication. Over the past two years the program has had at least one participant from 63 of the 67 districts.
Significant efforts have been made to increase the rigor and content of this course. Where it once provided about 40 content items over nine topics, it now introduces more than 140 content items over fourteen topics. More evaluations have been added through dialog forums, activity assignments, and quizzes. Additional lessons are being created to provide more options for teachers to introduce tobacco prevention in the classrooms.
An effort to reach more teachers while providing resources for those that have completed this course has resulted in a five-part solution: updated web site, blog, Facebook page, Twitter and YouTube. The improvements will provide ongoing opportunities for all teachers across the state to use current information, web links, multimedia and dialog to keep tobacco prevention alive in their classrooms. The Facebook page not only allows networking with other agencies and educators, but also provides an input arena for anyone involved in tobacco prevention. The blog was created to provoke stories about tobacco prevention today. This medium encourages discussion among our educators. Both of these are integrated with Twitter for micro-blogging and to integrate with other valuable resources. All of this is integrated for a very comprehensive marketing and support program.
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