Confessions of the 'unhealthy' - eating chocolate in the halls and smoking behind the bus garage: teachers as health missionaries.

By drawing on interviews with administrators, faculty and staff at one school in the northeastern United States, this qualitative work considers the ways in which school leaders negotiate, resist or draw upon discourses associated with health, weight, nutrition and fitness to understand and experience their own bodies and interpret their roles and responsibilities at the school. Analysis of the narratives suggest that school leaders saw themselves as public examples from which students might resist and/or mimic (ill-)health. Further, school leaders believed that it was only through their active engagement in and display of health that they were able to effectively evangelize their commitment to the social project of self. Thus, while schools could provide an important venue for young people to experience diverse notions of health and well-being, without a school leader's knowledge of or commit to exploring these alternatives, this outcome is unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]