The World Health Organization's Global

School Health Initiative is designed

to improve the health of children, school

personnel, families, and other members

of the community, through schools.

A "Health-Promoting School" can be

characterized as a school constantly

strengthening its capacity as a

healthy setting for living, learning,

and working.

There are 10 principles for a Health-Promoting School, including a principle devoted to the school environment: "The health promoting school places emphasis on the school environment, both physical and social, as a crucial factor in promoting and sustaining health." One of the pilot schools in the Health Promoting Schools Network was Fridtjof Nansen School in Hannover, Germany. Several of its key health-promoting projects promote healthy activity in the learning environment.

Schools that promote activity are realizing that student workspaces must be rethought. A student’s workspace must support learning activities, in the same way that a business workspace must support business activities. To measure the benefits of a more ergonomic classroom — including the pedagogical possibilities of new, motion-friendly teaching methods — Fridtjof Nansen School, together with the Ministry of Education of Lower Saxony and the City of Hannover, hosted a four-year study dedicated to exploring the relationship between a student’s opportunity for in-class motion and their health, well-being, and classroom performance. VS provided all the ergonomic furniture, including flexible, moveable seating, height-adjustable desks, and work surfaces that could be repositioned.

In order to accurately determine how a more dynamic classroom environment influenced the learning and performance capabilities of the children, the study observed three different classrooms at the school, each incorporating varying degrees of ergonomic furniture, freedom of movement, and dynamic teaching methods. The control group consisted of a neighboring primary school with conventional school furniture. The students were tested on their strength, coordination, and agility, and on their ability to concentrate. Their posture was analyzed from an orthopedic perspective, and their working behavior was monitored by both the teachers and the researchers. At the end of the study, the test group’s working behavior was more dynamic, which, combined with the movement-oriented teaching methods that had been used over the four years, had a positive influence on the student’s motor processes and posture. In attentiveness endurance tests, the test group also showed considerable increases in concentration.

For children, climbing is a basic need. While climbing, children experience, independently, their own motor abilities and talents, and learn how to overcome fear and gain confidence. In moving between risk and security, high places and low places, open areas and tight spaces, they learn the value of boundary setting and discover strategies for overcoming restrictions. Climbing is important for overall physical development, and contributes to building self-confidence.

Unfortunately, most children in the Fridtjof Nansen School district have little opportunity for climbing, and what opportunity does exist doesn’t offer enough challenges to attract children. So, the school has built an interior climbing wall and has installed an exterior “maze of rods.” It is a construction of six-meter-long wooden logs that appear to have fallen into position accidentally, like a pile of giant pick-up sticks. Diagonally positioned tree trunks stabilize the logs and offer different combinations of climbing levels. A plastic rope connects the main frame with another trunk, for hand-over-hand grappling. Falls are cushioned by a bed of compressed sand. However, the falling area has not been cleared of tree trunks, to encourage children to evaluate the risks of their situation before deciding to act. The openness of the structure allows children to learn by trial and error, in a self-determined way and at their own speed. 

Adapted from: The Educational Work-place and Physically Active Schoolchildren–alert heads, and “Mut tut gut! Das wichtige Spiel der kinder mit ihren Grenzen” For more: German Federal Association of Labor for Attitude and Movement, Fridtjof Nansen School