| 'Tis
the Season…for Professional Renewal that is.
Fall not only signals the beginning of
a new school year, but also the busiest time of year for professional
conferences and workshops. If the summer break wasn't enough to
get re-energized about your profession, the next month or two is
a great time to meet colleagues and catch up on what's happening
in our field.
I was fortunate enough to get off to
an early start by attending the recently held PACE (Physical Activity
in Contemporary Education) conference at the University of Illinois.
The principal theme of PACE was to examine the impact and implementation
of the federally mandated school wellness policy. As most of you
know, any school that receives federal funds to support its meal
program was required to develop a school wellness policy by the
start of the last school year.
At PACE, KIM
GRABER, AMY WOODS, and DARLA
CASTELLI, from the U of I Physical Education program,
managed to assemble an impressive cast of researchers and practitioners
to further explore topics that were presented in the two most recent
issues of JOPERD.
Arizona professor, CHUCK
CORBIN, kicked off the conference pointing out the
often misunderstood and vaguely defined meaning of the term "wellness."
He reminded us of similar confusion over a common understanding
of "physical fitness" more than a quarter century ago.
At that time there was no clear distinction between "sport"
and "health" related physical fitness. Corbin emphasized
that the challenge facing us today was to move people from dependent
to independent physical activity behaviors.
JUDY RINK,
from the University of South Carolina, followed with an analysis
of the role of Physical Education in the school wellness program.
Physical education, she noted, was intended to educate students
about the need to develop physically active lifestyles. School physical
activity, in contrast, had the goal of providing opportunities for
students to be physically active. Rink commented that most people,
and especially children, do not choose to participate in physical
activity for health reasons. In fact, she informed us, fitness is
frequently cited by students as what they hate most about physical
education.
Rink expressed concerns about PE programs
where the major goal was to provide students with "fun"
activities. Learning, she reminded us, can be fun, and perhaps more
importantly there's clear evidence that competence positively affects
participation. Students need skills to successfully participate
in most physical activities.
Rink was also one of several conference
presenters who suggested that school physical educators were ideally
placed to assume an emerging role as school facilitators of physical
activity. Such individuals would be charged with the goal of ensuring
that each and every student had a way to become physically active.
However, in regard to this opportunity for physical educators to
assume a new role, she concluded with a warning that, "The
current climate is a door that will not stay open for very long."
THOM McKENZIE,
from San Diego State University, examined community connections
in promoting physical activity. McKenzie is one of the creators
of the popular SPARK
and CATCH
programs, and a prolific researcher on children's physical education
and physical activity. He pointed out that most kids get their physical
activity after school. Physical activity, he pointed out, is higher
among boys than girls and tends to decline in both sexes after 6th
grade.
McKenzie observed that physical educators
don't spend much time promoting physical activity outside of their
classes. Today's youth, he reported, have become over dependent
on organized activity - they simply don't know how to play by themselves.
The many variables affecting student access to community facilities,
not surprisingly, also impact children's participation in physical
activity.
"The childhood obesity epidemic
is real," reported DR. RUSS PATE,
from the University of South Carolina, and one of the nation's leading
experts on children's health issues. Pate believed that schools
will need to be central to solving this problem and will have "tremendous
opportunities over the next few decades." He noted that fewer
than 15% of school-aged children currently walk to school, and only
1% bicycle - figures much lower than in many other developed nations.
Alarmingly, evidence suggests that the
change in children's weight has occurred much faster than most other
heath trends. Despite national recommendations that children accumulate
approximately 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity
daily, Pate reported on a study that showed almost no children were
currently achieving this goal. He concluded by stating that the
promotion of physical activity needed to become a national and state
priority.
Supporting these conference lectures
were a variety of presentations on practical ways to promote children's
physical activity. One of the most interesting was by MEG
GREINER, an Oregon physical education teacher and
recipient of a recent Disney Teacher Award. Every morning, students
in Meg's school start the day in the gym with 20 minutes of "TEAM
Time." Students and teachers participate in different physical
activities and team building activities. Not surprisingly - at least
to most of us - students in her school tend to score well on academic
performance tests.
Over the next couple of months most of
us will have opportunities to attend state AAHPERD conferences.
I encourage you to make time to join your colleagues, and share
what's happening in your schools. Enjoy the presentations; catch
up with news in the corridors. Take pleasure in being part of a
great profession and reaffirm your motivation to make a difference
this new academic year in promoting healthy and active lifestyles
for today's children.
Steve Jefferies, Publisher
pelinks4u
|
