August 2006 • Volume 10 • Number 1 • Pages 35-38
Spotlight on Health and PE
Tim McCord and Rhonda Wagonseller
PE4life Gets Kids Moving Every Day
A survey by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) and the American Heart Association found that while most states require that students take physical education, the majority do not mandate a specific number of minutes of physical education per week. The report, Status of Physical Education in the USA, reveals that among the seven states that do mandate minutes per week for middle schools, only Montana meets the national recommendation of 225 or more minutes per week. What does that say about the status of physical education in schools at a time when national attention is focused on the increased rate of childhood obesity? Are we talking the talk about ensuring our children are healthy but not walking the walk? The results of the NASPE survey are a bit discouraging, yet many middle schools around the country have stepped up to the plate and created a school culture that emphasizes student health and physical activity. In addition to banning snack foods and sugary drinks in their vending machines and emphasizing nutritious meals in their cafeterias, many schools are ensuring their students get up and move on a daily basis. For example, they've added activities such as inline skating and rock climbing to the PE curriculum. They are supplementing traditional gymnasiums with state of the art fitness centers complete with elliptical machines, rowing machines, stationary bikes, and weight machines. Curriculums emphasize fitness and effort rather than competition. One shining star is Titusville Middle School in Pennsylvania. Titusville boasts a nationally recognized physical education program that has dramatically improved students' health and instilled a commitment to lifelong fitness. We highlight Titusville's PE4Life program this month.
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Titusville is a tiny town tucked away in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania. Gone are the boom days spawned by Colonel Edwin Drake's discovery of oil. Today one finds a community ravaged by economic hardship and a dwindling population. These economic issues also have affected the school district, where tight budgets and the threat of school closings concern everyone.
Like all schools, Titusville Middle School must adhere to the policies set by No Child Left Behind, yet unlike many other schools, Titusville does not let test scores drive the curriculum. The education of the whole child is the driving force, as illustrated by the school's emphasis on physical education.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey showed that only 6.4% of middle/junior high schools provide daily physical education for all students in the school. It's easy to bash fast food, computers, video games, and TV, but the fact of the matter is physical education is a vital component of staying healthy and one that is currently a stepchild to other elements of the school curriculum.
In Titusville, we decided that rather than cut the only school-based program that helps our children lead healthier, more active lives now and in the future, we needed to "enable it" with new training, new tools, and the simple, easily accessible technology that allowed us to embrace a philosophy called PE4life.
A for Effort
When Titusville Middle School opened in 1999, the students were greeted with a new philosophy of inclusion. Newsweek reporter Susan Brink expressed it well when she said, "PE4life is for any kid who has been picked last, consigned to right field, or left dangling half-way up the climbing rope. The idea is to get away from the jock culture—the fastest, strongest, and most athletic—and instead start all kids on the road to lifelong fitness."
The Titusville School District considered children's health important enough to invest $30,000 in the middle school PE program. This initial funding allowed the program to finance equipment for a new Wellness Center. The district also purchased a technology that changed the landscape of Titusville Middle School PE: heart rate monitors.
Every student wears a heart rate monitor—a watch, elastic strap, and transmitter—during PE classes. The heart monitors allow each Titusville student to exercise safely at an appropriate fitness level. No longer does the teacher have to guess how hard each student is working. The heart rate monitor acts like a speedometer, telling the student whether to speed up or slow down the workout. Now, Titusville Middle School student physical education grades are based on effort and improvement rather than sports skills.
A second technology, fitness assessment software called a TriFit system, allows the PE staff to collect fitness data and develop fitness reports for every student. Through these types of technology we are embracing the PE4life credo of "building healthy student bodies, one at a time."
Staff members also determined that Titusville students needed more diverse fitness experiences than the usual team sport activities. If you visit a Titusville Middle School PE class today, you are likely to see students juggling, rock wall climbing, cross-country skiing, swimming, inline skating, or participating in team-building activities. We still offer team sports, but now instead of games with 22 players, all team sports are played in 4 vs. 4 formats.
Show Us the Money
We are fortunate that our school board and administration value physical education for every student. In addition to investing the initial money, they put another $40,000 into the physical education budget so we could develop the high school program to follow our students coming from the middle school.
Since then, however, it has been up to the PE staff to find additional funding. To fund another TriFit system, we asked Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield for their assistance. We also applied for grants to help fund our program. We were fortunate to receive a Carol M. White Physical Education Program Grant (PEP) that enabled us to upgrade all of our fitness equipment in the middle school and purchase climbing walls to introduce adventure education to our students.
At a time when video games have taken over most middle level students' free time, the Titusville PE program has embraced them rather than condemning them. Students in the Wellness Center can use interactive games like Dance Dance Revolution, Game Rider video bikes, or a martial arts-type game called Makoto. The PEP grant allowed us to purchase many of these games.
Making a Difference
The philosophy of fitness and physical activity for everyone has permeated the middle school. In addition to our PE classes, we allow each advisory group to schedule activities in the gym periodically. The entire building participates in Fitness Friday activities each week during advisory. We also have a thriving exploratory program during which more than half the offerings involve physical activity.
However, the bottom line for any physical education program is whether it is making a difference in the students.
- Are the students more physically active?
- Are students becoming more physically fit?
- Are they being exposed to a variety of activities?
In Titusville the overall fitness level of our students has improved (See Figure 1). Each year we organize a middle school health fair in cooperation with the Titusville Area Hospital. During the health fair, we operate a station that measures student lung capacity. In the past year we saw a 28% increase in the number of students who measured lung capacities at a healthy level.
Figure 1
Titusville Middle School students increase their fitness level
Lead from the Middle
Middle school PE in Titusville has provided the springboard to numerous success stories within the school district and much notoriety. Rep. John Peterson of the 5th District visited our PE program and has become a national spokesperson for the Titusville Middle School physical education program and for PE4life, a Kansas City-based advocacy organization that promotes quality, daily physical education programs in all U. S. schools.
The school board and administration have taken the concepts of the middle school program and utilized them to develop and expand other areas of physical education within the school system. Bucking national trends that diminish or eliminate PE, Titusville has chosen to increase physical education time for their students.
By altering the schedule for the school day, Titusville High School now is able to offer daily physical education for its students—required for all four years of high school. In addition to the high school PE requirements, the Titusville school district has developed a kindergarten PE program based on concepts developed by Jean Blaydes-Madigan and Cindy Hess, co-creators of Action-Based Learning.
PE4life
PE4life designated Titusville Middle School as a national PE4life Academy, meaning we provide comprehensive training to schools and communities throughout the country to enable them to develop their own PE4life programs. To date Titusville has hosted more than 100 different schools.
Students in Titusville Middle School, like middle level students everywhere need quality, daily physical education. NMSA's This We Believe: Successful Schools for Young Adolescents states, "Developmentally responsive middle level schools promote abundant opportunities for students to develop and maintain healthy minds and bodies." We have embraced this middle level belief as well as a PE4life maxim: "Healthy kids are worth the sweat!"
Tim McCord is a 27-year veteran of middle level education. In addition to teaching physical education at Titusville Middle School, he also serves as Titusville's PE Department chair and director of the PE4life Academy. He can be reached at tmccord@pe4life.org.
Rhonda Wagonseller has been teaching at Titusville Middle School for four years. She has been responsible for implementing many of the programs described in this article. She can be reached at rwagonseller@gorockets.org.
Copyright © 2006 by National Middle School Association