Keeping a Physical Education Active and Alive

Keeping a physical education department active and alive

Achieving academic success and building a child’s foundation is one of the most important missions in an elementary school environment. Taking the raw tools and talents each student has and molding those skills into a student is a very challenging task, but one every teacher happily sets in front of themselves every school year. Every subject is like an ingredient that comprises the final product – a successful student – and without having physical education each of the 350 students in the given scenario will be short of what they need to be successful.
Every principal wants to have high test scores and for their students to become successful and this requires adequate scores on standardized test. Earning high test scores allows federal funding to continue and even increase in some scenarios.
Battling to keep your physical education program , the first tactic in approaching your principal is to show him or her that active students are more capable of keeping high grades and high test scores. Another school system that faced a similar scenario with the district making cuts to departments occurred at Naperville Central High School (http://www.ncusd203.org/central/) in Illinois. Needing to raise test scores, the school chose to cut instruction in their physical education department to increase test scores in other academic areas such as math, science and language arts. After comparing the test scores, results show that test scores dropped the year that the school cut time in the physical education department by XX percent. The local television station in the northeastern Illinois community, approximately one hour west of Chicago, did an in depth newscast showing the findings of the study (http://www.ncusd203.org/central/html/what/physed/learningreadiness.htm). The method used to support that active kids get higher test scores was done by using two groups – both convenient samples – from within Naperville Central High School. One group was allotted time for instructional physical education and the other group was not allotted time in their day for instructional physical education. The instructor that was able to provide physical education integrated different comprehensive skills using Active Based Learning (www.actionbasedlearning.com) to stimulate positive brain activity for his students.
For example, at an elementary level, during stretches you might have students count in Spanish out loud to help with their Spanish class. Another potential example would be to give some of your activities an Olympic theme if the students were studying ancient Greek games in social studies. These are just two examples, but the possibilities are endless when you can integrate out-of-class lectures in a physical education environment.
My next step in persuasion would reiterate the common knowledge that the United States is the most obese country in the world and taking away physical education will only add to that statistic. Currently 65 percent of adults in the United States are considered to be obese and their young children are also projected to become even more obese than their parents as they grow older (Primary Movements Handout).
With video game systems becoming more popular and the capability to get tasks accomplished with less physical activity many children are falling into a sedentary environment. Either it be watching the average four hours of television or in taking too much at the dinner table, the problem that is still occurring is that students need to have an active lifestyle.
Being a teacher, you cannot go home with students, but you can work them on a daily basis within a school environment. By integrating different programs into physical education and teaching children to attain a healthy lifestyle you are giving your students the foundation for a healthy lifestyle – physically and academically.
There is no other program that can integrate skills from each academic class into one and be as adaptable to a learner as physical education can be to a student. Students that learn skills at an early age are more likely to grasp concepts and continue them throughout their lives -- physical education being no different.
Taking away a physical education program from a school will only send students backwards. For kindergarten aged students, members of the school administration team needs to continue to reinforce the importance of physical education while integrating other ingredients of education to make students successful in the classroom and at life.