December is a good time to reflect on events of the past year. Most noteworthy was probably the implementation of the federal wellness policy. For the first time, many school districts now have policies on record that address student nutrition and physical activity. Policy drives action. Health advocates - and hopefully physical education teachers are at the forefront - now have legislation to support their efforts in our public schools.

Agreements by the leading vendors to improve the content of school snack and drink machines was another success. While it is somewhat frustrating that it took a former US President to move companies toward these agreements, those of us in PE and health should celebrate the progress made. But once again, we all need to recognize that recommendations are simply that - suggestions. Real change will require all of us to be vigilant and proactive in ensuring the recommendations are implemented in our locals schools.

Finally, the more I reflect upon what's good and what's bad in today's physical education, I conclude that the foundation of a quality program is a good curriculum. Absent a well-planned and documented curriculum, it's so easy to fall back on what we've always done, and fail to improve. The result is that we don't move forward and meet our students' needs.

Unlike most other areas in the school curriculum, physical educators have freedom to pretty much teach what they want and avoid teaching what they don't like. That way of thinking doesn't make it in other subjects for obvious reasons. The lack of respect that many public school physical educators feel may be self-inflicted. Why should other teachers respect us when they are required to teach a particular curriculum and we do whatever we feel like?

Doing something about the curriculum issue has produced the many detailed instructional units you can now find posted on the NASPE Forum. We invite you to take a look, share your own ideas, and help us to begin creating a resource of instructional materials that will help us to become better teachers. Enjoy your vacation. Stay healthy, and especially make time to enjoy your family.

Steve Jefferies
Guest Secondary Section Editor

This year witnessed landmark legislation and some voluntary agreements that promise to positively impact the dining and snacking habits of public school students everywhere.

First, by August 2006, under terms included in the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004, all US schools that receive federal funding were required to create a school wellness policy. Many schools recognized the wonderful opportunity this legislation represented for truly reflecting upon student nutrition. As a result school dining has changed dramatically in many districts. Although the law lacked any form of enforcement - there are no wellness police - we may later look back upon it as a significant catalyst, both for improving children's health, and for rethinking the role of the public school physical education teacher.

If you weren't involved in the development of your school district's wellness policy you should be! Think about it. When else have you had the chance to create policy that specifically sets out what your students should be eating and how much physical activity they should be getting? School policy provides direction for what administrators should and shouldn't do. By shaping school wellness legislation, advocates for children's health have the opportunity to significantly shape how schools respond to students' activity and eating habits.

To see what other schools have done with their Wellness policies visit the Action for Healthy Kids web site and read about the organization's Campaign for School Wellness. As you probably know, it's tough to change school dining and opponents frequently point to the likely negative consequences for students. In reality, there are many examples of schools nationwide that have addressed and solved the common criticisms. If your school is one of those reluctant to implement change, it would be helpful to bring to the table examples of success stories.

In May, the leading beverage companies agreed to healthier beverage guidelines for drinks sold in schools, limiting portion size, and offering only lower calories and nutritious drinks. Then in October, we witnessed a second breakthrough affecting school vending machines and snack foods offered outside of the school meal program. The new guidelines limit the calories, fat (saturated and trans), sugar, and sodium of foods offered to students through vending machines, a la carte lines, school stores, snack carts, and fundraisers.

Thanks for these achievements is due to the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a relatively new organization supported by former President Bill Clinton. BUT, to have any impact, physical educators must realize these agreements are only GUIDELINES. It would be a tragic mistake for physical educators to simply think that schools will voluntarily follow these recommendations. The agreements were not accompanied by "nutrition police." It is up to PE and health teachers to campaign for their adoption.

The following statement was included in Secondary PE Section Editor, Dr. Jon Poole's column last April. I include it here because it nicely summarizes what many of us are striving to do through our involvement in physical education. It troubles me that we seem to so easily lose sight of what should be our ultimate goal in PE - getting students skillful, knowledgeable, and motivated enough to stay active for a lifetime. While we want all students to become physically fit, perhaps the best way to do it is not through exercises and conditioning, but rather through developing a love of one or more types of physical activity.

		One of My Favorite Statements Physical education’s goal is to help students find at least one activity they really enjoy, help them develop adequate skill to participate joyfully at least at a recreational level, an understanding of rules and strategies, the ability to participate safely, and an understanding of how to get started, how to continue to learn, and how to stay involved and persist across their lives. -- Dr. Leslie Lambert - Ferrum College

For two years now, pelinks4u has been the host of the NASPE Forum. We were involved in starting this message board because we felt it would meet the need of teachers who had questions, but who for various reasons did not want to subscribe to the daily NASPE Talk emailed listserv.

If you are reading this page, it's likely that you have also at some time visited the NASPE Forum, and perhaps even posted a message or responded to a posting. The neat part about using the forum is that you only read the topics that interest you. BUT, what you might NOT know is that you can automate hearing about topics of personal interest. In other words, if you post a message or have an interest in a specific forum section, you can set up your registration so that you are notified whenever anyone communicates on this topic.

How do you do this? You first need to log into the forum. Although it's possible to view messages as a guest, you must register to be able to post. We have to do this to limit the spam that would otherwise get posted. Registration is free and just takes a few minutes. Here's the direct link.

Once registered you can post and respond, but more importantly you can edit your profile (button link on top left corner of page) and indicate which specific topics interest you. If you have a question you can also click on your profile to indicate that you would like to receive an emailed response whenever anyone responds to your question. Neat huh? Well, tell your teaching colleagues and let's get even more sharing of information.

DETAILED UNIT PLANS

One of the best, until now, kept secrets of the NASPE Forum has been the inclusion of detailed unit plans. It's always concerned me that graduating PE majors typically begin their teaching careers with limited curriculum support. The time spent lesson planning during professional preparation can't be duplicated once teaching full time, so new graduates end up without quality instructional materials. As their careers continue, coaching demands increase and families expand, and they have less and less time to think about quality physical education teaching. The result? Lessons are created on-the-fly, and activities are limited to the individual's existing knowledge. Small wonder then that team sports persist to be at the foundation of so many secondary school curriculums.

What can be done? Actually, that's a question I plan to address sometime soon on the homepage. For now though, I'd like to point out that on the NASPE Forum you can view and print off comprehensive unit plans for several different activities. These units are often more than 200 pages long, and include detailed lesson plans, skill charts, task cards, syllabi, and resource lists. Here's a list of what's currently available:

	Badminton		Orienteering
	Basketball		Pickleball
	Bicycling		Softball
	Conditioning		Tennis
	Dance		Volleyball
	Golf		Weight Training
	Martial Arts

The units were created by physical education majors at Central Washington University. Although the quality varies considerably, these units are at least a start for someone who would like to teach a curriculum that has a scope and sequence. What we would like is feedback, or even better, written modifications, alternatives, or suggestions from teachers willing to try out the units.

In fact if you have instructional materials for any of these units that you would be willing to share, we invite you to post them next to the appropriate unit on the forum. To me it makes little sense for everyone to expend hours of time planning similar units. Of course, it needs to be recognized that modifications will always be needed depending on the progress of students, but it's our hope that the units will serve as a good beginning and eliminate the need for on-the-fly lesson design.

In May, Ed Kupiec expressed concern for the trend of allowing waivers or exemptions for physical education in secondary schools. Ed linked several sources for information if this is an issue in your school district. Rather than make this a personal issue - it's helpful to be able to show the strong arguments that have been made by influential national organizations against waiving physical education.

Opposing Substitutions and Waivers/Exemptions for Required Physical Education - "It is the position of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) that all K-12 students should take all required physical education courses, and that no substitutions, waivers, or exemptions should be permitted." Read the rest...

Sample Policies to Encourage Physical Activity - In their guidelines for developing policy related to physical education, The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) recommends the following with regard to exemptions in physical education. "Physical education teaches students essential knowledge and skills; for this reason, exemptions from physical education courses shall not be permitted on the basis of participation on an athletic team, community recreation program, ROTC, marching band, or other school or community activity." Read the entire set of policy suggestions for physical education.

Physical Education: What Some in the Medical Profession Believe - Increased demands for time to prepare students for high-stakes assessment has put many physical education programs in jeopardy. For many students, this is also the end to regular physical activity. The health consequences are obvious to us.

Dr. Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. writes "A child who is truly healthy is healthy in body, mind, and spirit. Physical health means more than just the absence of disease. It means having a body that is strong, flexible, and coordinated, and having the skills to use that body in joyful ways. If you watch three and four year old children, many of them already demonstrate these fundamentals of physical health. But as children get older and spend long hours sitting in schools and doing homework, physical fitness declines, and many of them slip into an inactive, unhealthy lifestyle." Read the rest...

Public Attitudes Towards Physical Education - Are schools meeting the desires of parents and students? The results of a NASPE survey suggest that they may not be. Read the results.

Throughout the year, pelinks4u tries to include selected books and resource reviews. If you are interested in finding some interesting professional reading material, this would be a good month to review past reviews. There's a link in the middle of the home page, or you can find them here.

Last March pelinks4u Secondary Section Editor, David Rojeck, described how he became a physical education teacher, and especially the relationship he shares with his father - also a PE teacher. He concluded by addressing what he described as 10 major issues affecting physical education teaching. We have reprinted David's article this month, and invite readers to respond to David's suggestions. You can email us at pelinks@pelinks4u.org.

To start things rolling, I note with interest David's comments about using exercise as punishment. While (in my opinion) he rightly points out that exercise (or at least some type of physical activity) might be exactly what some students need to get them back on task, I remain concerned about the misuse of exercise. It seems to me quite appropriate for a teacher to take exercise breaks to help students refocus their attention, but quite undesirable to punish a student who shows up late for class with some kind of exercise as punishment.

Incidentally, I am always amazed that after discussing this topic with my college students, and pointing out the list of national organizations opposed to using exercise as punishment, many students (and future physical educators) continue to support its use. What do you think?

DAD AND ME AND PE

I suppose one of the benefits of being a voluntary section editor is the one opportunity to offer my opinions on physical education today. The main editors are welcome to strike this article down, if it seems too controversial. That's OK, because I’ve already supplied my quota of articles to pelinks4u.jasonbuckboyer.com for the March 2006 issue. I don't have a blog. I haven't tried to reach the world via the Internet. For the most part, I believe it is our main responsibility to put forth our efforts to those who are physically with us from day to day. But, I do have opinions. So, I shall offer a few of them now.

The profession of Physical Education goes back quite a ways in my family. My Dad graduated from college with his degree in Physical Education sometime around 1950. He taught physical education, and coached for a good 25 years. It seemed to me that he was always ahead of the curve in good teaching practices. Dad was making classes fun before the profession was advocating fun. He was breaking down classes and teams into various forms of statistics before statistics became fashionable. You should see his baseball efficiency rating system.

When my Dad retired from teaching, he was far from ready to officially retire. Chet was concerned that fitness scores were going down, particularly students' ability to pass the pull-up test. Dad reasoned, quite sensibly so, that all students should be able to pull their own body weight, at least once, right? But, if students can't do even one pull-up, how can we, as teachers, effectively and efficiently help them to improve to the point that they can pass the pull-up test.

So, my Dad invented the Pull-Up Trainer, a simple, practical device that allows all students to do pull-ups by taking their body angle from upright to various angles by laying on a wagon and successfully executing pull-ups. He even set up programs on how to use the Pull-Up Trainer in elementary and secondary classes within the regular class format.

Dad spent a good 20 years after retiring from teaching, selling and delivering Pull-Up Trainers in his van to all parts of the country. In my opinion, he always marketed his product at a price well below its worth. It wasn't about making his fortune. It was his way of solving the problem. The logo on the Trainer said, "The Pull-Up Trainer - The Need Fulfilled." It was Dad's way of solving the obesity problem. Don't worry so much about spending time losing weight, though we should watch our diets. Rather, gain in strength. If your Pull-Up Trainer score went down, chances are you didn't get weaker, but you gained weight. If your score went up, maybe it was because you lost weight.

Read the rest of this article...

"You are too dangerous to teach in my school," I heard my principal declare from the other end of her conference table. So did the others who had gathered to pay witness.

My heart skipped a few beats. A lump swelled in my throat as her comment sunk in. Oh, I knew she was annoyed with my grades, that I was spoiling her numbers, and that in her effort to garnish awards and accolades, numbers had become everything. But, not for one minute did I think it would come to this. Sure, she wanted to cut me, the ex-grievance chairman of the union, down to size, get me to play the statistics game, get me to be like the others who conformed to survive. But this was different. This was not just censuring. This was career threatening, and with her there would be no backing down.

How could this be happening? How could I become a "throw away" teacher? Could she prevail? What about my passion for teaching? And my thirty-one years? How could she, without flinching or a sign of remorse, actually question my ability to teach? Am I dreaming? Is this meeting really about me and my removal from teaching? "You are too dangerous to teach here," she said again. "I have asked the Superintendent to have you removed immediately."

Too Dangerous to Teach, written by Secondary PE Section Editor, Isobel Kleinman, is a poignant, sometimes funny, often infuriating story of survival in a National School of Excellence where politics, unethical business practices, and betrayals mark a veteran teacher too dangerous to teach.

Find out more about this book, and purchasing information.

I was fortunate to be able to review Neil McKinlay's book Learning to Swim: Reflections on Living this past spring. Here's a short extract from my review:

"At it's best, sport allows us to not only know ourselves better, but to also become more fully who we are (from introduction)." As the title suggests, Learning to Swim: Reflections on Living is much more than an instructional manual for swim teachers. Instead, each chapter is crafted around life lessons witnessed over many years by author, and long-time, award-winning swimming coach Neil McKinlay.

McKinlay's book would make a great gift for anyone who coaches or is thinking about coaching. It's easy to read and very thought provoking. Highly recommended!