Health is a mandatory class here at Cardozo, usually taken during one’s junior year, replacing one’s physical education class. Some see it as a crucial class, while others tend to bat an eye against it. Although some may not take it seriously, Mr. Levine, one of Cardozo’s health teachers, puts his best effort into making the class as exciting and informative as possible.
Mr. Levine has been teaching since the 2000s. Two decisive factors drove him into his career path. “I come from a whole family of people in the helping professions, like my brother says they’re both school psychologists, my mother was a teacher, my other brother’s a doctor,” he said.
His entire family had different ways of helping out people in ways they enjoyed. He always had an interest in nutrition and health. Combining these two ideas led to him falling in love with understanding the importance of specific actions on the body.
When asked about how crucial it is to have health class be available for high school students, primarily for their development, Mr. Levine claimed, “Yes I do actually, I believe that health is one of the most crucial aspects of someone’s life and if you don’t have you health, then you can’t appreciate life.”
Mr. Levine always tries to put a big emphasis on the importance of health class since he claims to appreciate life is to be healthy, which is true for all types of health whether its physical, mental, or any other health, all of them play a big role in one’s life and should be prioritized very significantly.
Aside from Mr. Levine’s input on the matter, many articles claim the same thing, emphasizing how health class can positively affect students. One article in particular is “The Importance of Having a Health Class in High School,” which directly states, “ For example, talking about sexual health will make students understand the risks, know the precautions to take, and most importantly, they will understand their bodies. The same can be said about learning about drugs and their use/abuse.”
This quote emphasizes how learning can help students avoid risks in terms of sexual and physical health. These two factors can change one’s life forever if one isn’t careful with one’s decisions. When things like STDs or STIs can very easily be spread, this can very easily change someone’s life. As well as drugs, even one use of a drug impacts someone and can lead to long-term addiction, further impacting their life.
Mr. Levine has encountered students impacted by these factors, which is why he can use these experiences to help his current and upcoming students even more. To further enhance his lessons to give his students the most memorable experience with health, Mr Levine tends to use personal anecdotes to show his students that the advice that he gives out is from experience.
Whether it was a mistake he made in the past, or something that helped him, he shares his experiences with his students because he believes that if they realize the situations they learn about actually happened to someone, seeing the results could either cause these students to either avoid doing a negative act, or strive to do it if its a positive act.
Similarly, Mr. Levine tends to use movies and short films to help students learn in the classroom. These act as a way for them to connect the topic of the lesson through a means that is easily understandable for the students.
“In the past, I used to show Supersized Me, which is a film about a guy who ate McDonald’s for a month to see how it impacted his health. This is good for my students because it tends to show how someone gets impacted from things that they do in their daily lives, especially when the films shown are real life stories/experiences,” he said.
Aside from the film he spoke of, there were many more that he showed his students whether or not they are fictional or not, he believes that they can be a positive influence on the students if they manage to learn something from it.
Although teaching may be something that Mr. Levine tends to enjoy, there are many hardships when it comes to teaching. As it applies to many teachers, many students tend to be on their phone during class rather than paying attention to the lesson, making it difficult for the teacher to teach the class sometimes thoroughly. Another hardship would be that some students don’t take the class seriously. Since health only counts as a physical education class, some people take it upon themselves to not care for the class and not take it seriously.
