I am a physical education teach at Greenwood School District in Greenwood, Wisconsin. I teach physical education to Kindergarten -6th grade. In Greenwood elementary students have daily physical education. The activities that the students do have an element of physical fitness. I try to reinforce this on a daily basis. Due to the changes in life styles I see this as being an important component of physical education. In the thirty years I have taught, students lead a less active life style. They are still are living in a very rural area but no longer are required to help with daily chores related to agriculture. Students go home and spend a great deal of time in front of a screen instead of helping the family or playing outside. The obesity rate is a problem due to diet and lack of activity. This continues to plague our population and then more health care is needed as my students mature. I work much harder to tell students why we need to lead a healthy life style. I also show them what it takes to maintain the healthy life style. I use the Physical Best Activity Guide to teach students the components of being physically fit. We use step counters, heart rate monitors and Fitnessgram to make the students and parents aware of what it takes to stay fit. I am definitely in the business of prevention.
To improve our health care in United States we need to address the fitness of our youth. Daily physical education should be required. Teachers would then have the opportunity to impact the fitness of their students. As a result they would become educated consumers, hopefully resulting in a person who values fitness. Many of our health issues today are a result of inactivity. Students need to learn activities that they can do for the rest of their lives.
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I agree. If we learn to take better care of ourselves we will need less health care. Less less health care we need the more the costs can go down. I think we need to learn to look at all aspects of our live, our physical activity, how we eat, our stress level, our social network, spirituality all of it. Be need to learn to value our mind and body and then to take the best possible care of it so we can lower our chances of spending large amounts on health care and insurance. However, I know that life happens and because of this something also needs to be done about insurance coverage.
ReplyDeleteYou are a great phy ed teacher! Like you said, kids are not getting activity like they used to due to changes in the world. (agriculture, technology) They need to understand how important it is so we can try and stop this obesity epidemic! It is sad to hear when schools have to make budget cuts and cut out physical education. I see phy ed as much more of a benefit than any algebra class. Seriously!
ReplyDeleteI think an important thing to point out is that the students' health educator has to tell them about the importance of physical activity. As she mentioned, in past decades daily physical activity was a must for young children because their families depended on their help around the household. However, I'm sure actual discussions weren't part of the parent-child relationship. It was simply a necessity. Nowadays, the need for children to physically assist their families has depleated, yet, family conversation on physical activity has stayed the same. Therefore, not only are children not requested/forced to be active daily, they do not grow up understanding the importance of physical activity. I think it is fabulous that the health educator requires daily activity out of students and of course something is better than nothing. However, the sad truth is that unless students are intristically motivated or being cohersed to be active at home, our society will continue to balloon until our we have an obesity epidemic.. oh wait, we already do!! What now?!
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