Schools encourage students to embrace PE
TITUSVILLE, Pa. (AP) – Gym class in the Titusville Area School District used to be a place where dodge ball was a rite of passage, a missed shower was grounds for a poor grade and a natural athlete was a teacher’s pet. But the physical education program at the 2,600-student school district has gone through a dramatic transformation in the last five years and now is a role model for other rural schools who are trying to jump-start their physical education programs and urge their students to make exercise a permanent part of their lives.
While some schools in the state have cut the money spent on gymnasium equipment and have eliminated physical education classes, Titusville Area School District has joined a small but growing group that has increased the amount of time students spend in gym class. Officials shaved time off its high school periods to make room on the schedule for a daily gym class.
The district found thousands of dollars to buy exercise equipment and convert a storage area in the middle school into a wellness center.
The Titusville district, about 85 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, also developed a physical education program that uses heart rate monitors, video games and activities such as fly fishing to get students moving. Now, sometimes the slowest runner in the class gets the best grade.
The evolution started about five years ago, when a lecture about the merits of heart rate monitors and a tour of a state-of-the-art fitness center in a suburban Chicago high school galvanized the school district and Tim McCord, the department chairman it had recently hired.
McCord had been a physical education teacher for nearly two decades before he attended his first statewide teachers convention. There, on a whim, he attended a seminar about heart rate monitors – a system of a chest band and wrist watch that measures the user’s pulse.
“I was amazed. They talked about how all kids could succeed at their particular level and they talked about how you could be able to monitor what a child was doing,” McCord said.
“It dawned on me that I could give a child a grade based on their effort, and not their ability, and it opened up a whole new world for me.”
Also at that convention, McCord learned of a school district in Naperville, Ill., which was the first to use curriculum called P.E. 4 Life, a program designed by a nonprofit organization that advocates daily health and fitness classes for students of all ages and was started by Jim Baugh, the chief executive officer of Wilson Sporting Goods.
“There is a national dialogue going on about obesity, especially childhood obesity. Physical education is a clear solution to the challenge that this nation faces,” said P.E. 4 Life chief executive officer Anne Flannery said. “(P.E. 4 Life) offers ideas, support, suggestions so schools can start a curriculum that delivers health, fitness and sports activities to all students, every day.”
Within days, McCord made the trip to Naperville, toured the district’s schools and upscale fitness rooms and met with physical education instructor Phil Lawler.
McCord said he was impressed with what he saw – a climbing wall, in-line skates and stationary bikes hooked up to video games – but he was deflated when he realized that his small district probably couldn’t afford the equipment found in the affluent Chicago suburb’s fitness rooms.
Nonetheless, McCord, with Lawler and P.E. 4 Life’s help, returned to Titusville to convince administrators of what the district’s physical education program could become.
Some of the changes to Titusville’s physical education program were born out of creativity – McCord has sought area hospitals, universities and corporations. His lobbying also recently helped the school secure a $342,000 Carol M. White Physical Education for Progress grant.
P.E. 4 Life holds Titusville up as a model school because of its creativity and persistency and teachers and administrator from Pennsylvania, New York and Arkansas have looked to McCord for advice.
“Some schools might look at more affluent schools like Naperville and get overwhelmed,” Flannery said. “The reason why we point to Titusville is because its leadership is dynamic and it makes the most out of very little.”
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P.E. 4 Life, http://www.pe4life.com