Choose Wisdom

Anonymous Conventional wisdom would say that cheeseburgers aren't really the best thing for your heart, right? But how do you tell that to a kid who's poor and eats them for lunch everyday because it's the most filling thing on the menu?

Last semester myself and other nursing students were challenged with the task of teaching nutrition to a group of elementary school kids who were at high risk for obesity. So what does this have to do with mantic wisdom or experiential wisdom? The challenge was to develop ways to teach kids how make wiser food choices as they moved on to middle school. The difficulty was not pulling from our knowledge and experience because we knew what the right things were. It was forming the wisdom we had into understandable messages that were clear and simple enough for an elementary school student.

Formulating teaching plans that would truly reach the class was very challenging. Our goal wasn't to just give out information, but to give them the tools that would spark their interest in exploring more about nutrition and healthy eating habits as they grow into adolescence.

In class today we discussed wisdom as something people choose to follow. I agree in choosing Lady Wisdom, but it's not wisdom if the message gets lost in translation.

So how did we get our message across? How did we get our kids to choose wisdom? We gave them a carrot.