For the past few days I’ve been thinking of this post, but didn’t know exactly what I wanted to say.  I still don’t even know exactly where to start, with this, but I’ve been a preschool teacher for a long time now, and for the first time it dawned on me that not only am I the student’s teacher, I’m also their role model. With our summer theme being the olympic games we have focused a lot on cultural diversity, and sports, but these past few days we’ve started to focus on healthy eating, and staying active.  As I was sitting there reading them this book explaining the food pyrmaid, I realized, how can I teach these guys the importance of eating healthy and staying active, when I clearly have not? 

One of the pages in the book talked about how we shouldn’t eat too many sweets because you could gain too much weight….that page alone hit me hard.  Looking back in my eating habits, sweet have ALWAYS been an issue.  As a child I’d stay home when my parents went to the store just so I could sneak ice cream. I used to hide brownies in my room, for  “later” but couldn’t think about anything other than those brownies, so before I knew it, it was gone.  I won’t lie, sweets weren’t the only issue, my portions have been an issue, the type of foods I eat have always been an issue, my lack of exercise, has always been an issue…….ugh I’m starting to ramble now, but the point is, here I am reading to my 3 year olds and stressing the important of living a healthy lifestyle, and it it almost seems like I’m contradicting myself.

But the good in this, is that I realize this, and as if I didn’t have enough motivation to get in shape before, I have even more motivation now, because I want to be someone my students look up to, I want to practice what I preach, not tell them the importance of it, and then in the same breath turn around and eat a huge bowl of ice cream….my actions no longer just affect me, they affect those that look up to me as well.