PE4life can help improve your program
I read this article and I went to your website – good luck with your program. Our country desperately needs intervention with the health of our children and schools are the best place to make this happen.
Michael you sound like an amazing man with a strong passion.
I just wanted to share some information from another person that has a passion and a very successful program. I might not consider myself and expert in the field of fitness (but I have connected with some of the top fitness trainers in the country, from professional sports trainers to Olympic athletes. I may not be an expert in fitness, but I do consider myself the leading expert in the country at developing a success physical education program in schools. I have some strong data that backs up my claim.
After I share a few “success” stories, I wonder if you might have an interest in promoting our concept. (Pe4life) Your plate maybe full and you may already be satisfied with your present school physical education support program. At least take the time to investigate our story, after all, we both have the same mission, and there is enough childhood obesity to keep us both busy.
I was a middle school physical education teacher and high school coach for 35 years. The last twenty years of my career, I helped developed a model physical education program for the country. We completely threw out the “old” image of PE and re-created a program that made sense and was respected by the administration, parents, students, and community members. Parents actually rated physical education the number one curriculum in our district for satisfaction.
We shifted the focus away from the sport model which was only meeting the needs of a small population on a temporary basis. We wanted to focus on a health and wellness approach, that would not only be good for the athletes, but for the first time in the history of schools, we would have a program that would meet the needs of every child that walks into a physical education class. We know that only 3% of our population plays teams sports as their form of physical activity as an adult, yet for the last 50 years, teaching sports skills to every child (forcing it on the non-athletes, embarrassing them, and turning them off to fitness) was the main objective of our PE delivery.
If physical education was a business, we went bankrupt about 20 years ago. A very important rule in business, the customer is always right. We needed to figure out why the nation did not respect physical education and we figured it out. We built a new “business” model for PE and it is thriving.
To help the exposure of our PE program grow, Jim Baugh, then the CEO of Wilson sporting goods formed a new non-profit organization to promote this “New PE”, now called PE4life (www.pe4life.org)
I am going to summarize a few of the many strengths of our program. If you are interested, and want to investigate more, you can go to our website or do a google search:
Phil lawler+ physical education, it will kick up several articles including a Time Magazine article this month (third time in Time)
We first built our program on cardiovascular fitness. 20 years ago the childhood obesity epidemic was not an issue, so we focused on fighting heart disease, our number one killer. Unfortunately as our program grew over the years, the childhood obesity epidemic broke out. The childhood obesity epidemic is slowly bringing a focus back on schools physical education programs. After building this PE4life program we started collecting some amazing data. Nation wide 35% of school age children are overweight or obese. I recently was interviewed by NBC nightly News and they projected by 2015 fifty per cent of children in this country will be either overweight or obese. In our school district with over 20,000 students, recently we tested 1500 freshman and our rate of overweight and obese students combined was 3% - I should repeat that 3%.
We thought every school in the country would adopt our PE4life program, but we were wrong. Because of the federal government program NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, every school administrator in the country is focused on science, math, and reading. Schools are not evaluated nor do they receive funding, if children are healthy. Schools are strapped financially and it is difficult to get schools to focus on physical education, especially with the bad reputation physical education has nation wide.
We knew we needed to find an addition way to “sell” quality PE in the schools. We found the secret and actually found a third compelling reasons to bring quality daily PE back into the American schools systems. I was hoping if you “buy” into our PE4life program, you could help sell our philosophy that is data and research driven.
Several years ago a big break for me was connecting with Dr Kenneth Cooper, the Father of Aerobics; he is a big fan of our PE4life program. My second biggest break through was when I connected with Dr John Ratey, the top brain research specialist from Harvard. A famous quote from Dr Ratey, “At Harvard we have discovered that exercise is the fertilizer for the brain and that fertilizer is so good I would call it miracle-gro”. By the way Dr Ratey has a new book coming out in January called SPARK, a must buy for any one working with in the education world.
Under Dr Ratey’s direction, our school district recently completed a three year pilot program based on current brain research. We developed a unique physical education class called Learning Readiness PE. Our objective was to improve reading scores using physical activity. The results was astonishing, we improved reading scores a half a grade level in one semester. The program was expanding year two, with the same results, the third year, we included the math program in the pilot and the same improvement was recorded. Learning Readiness PE is going to change the face of education in the future. Our school district is totally buying into the research and data we have developed. Physical education is becoming the core subject area in our building that all other subject areas revolve around. For example, guidance counselors, ask students when helping with their schedules at the beginning of the year, they ask students “what do you think will be your most difficult class?” Once the class is identified, the counselor tries to schedule physical education the period before the student’s most difficult academic class. Our counselors know students are in the best position reading to learn, right after exercise. Dr Ratey proved this concept in research and we now have proved it in practical application. A major advantage at our school, our students take daily PE all year long, all four years. This schedule should be the norm in all American Schools.
The impact of Learning Readiness PE has caused other changes in our district. You ask anyone in education, what is the most important week of the entire school year and they will tell you the week they administer State Standardized Test. The administrators get tense because they will be evaluated on their students success based on the results of these high stakes test. Most schools run a special schedule on testing days. Many schools do not schedule PE, and only academic courses meet on abbreviated schedules during testing weeks. The schools tell students to eat a good breakfast and make sure they get a good night sleep so they can do well on the test. Of course this is good advice but we have even better advice to prepare students for testing. Activate the body, which will activate the brain, which will prepare them for testing. Last spring during our State Testing week, we put a special schedule together based on Learning Readiness PE research. We started the day, having 3000 high school students walking the hall ways for 30 minutes to fast beat music (to stimulate the brain). During testing breaks, every academic teacher went through brain research training on movement activities that would help stimulate the brain. This was an experiment based on scientific research. You can draw your own conclusion, but when we received out state test scores back this fall, we set a school record, the highest test scores every recorded in our school. Ironically the state just released a report this week, that state wide there was a slight decline in state test scores.
Besides having daily PE, more and more of our academic teachers are getting students out of their seats and moving while they learn. This education paradigm shift will be exciting, when school administrator’s nation wide learn about this new research. The secret to improving test scores is not more seat time for students.
Our administration even changed the schedule for the opening day of school based on Learning Readiness PE. If you have been in education a long time, you will understand what it is like to go through the first day of school for teachers only. No offense administrators, but this day is boring, and teachers are not physically or mentally ready to be back into the routine of a full school day. This year our administration made a slight change in the opening day schedule, the morning meetings were cut short by 15 minutes and the afternoon schedule was also reduced 15 minutes. After a long morning in meetings, an extra long big lunch with friends, teachers returned to school in the afternoon with a unique schedule. Every teacher in this large high school was required to participate for 30 minutes in a physical activity before starting afternoon meetings. The choices varied to teacher’s physical ability and interest. Walking briskly for 30 minutes was a popular choice but many others chose dance, rock climbing, palates, or aerobics. The administration felt the afternoon meetings were the most productive meetings in school history of opening day for teachers.
We now have more and more academic teachers getting students out of their seats and active while they learn. The idea is new but even some veteran teaches and buying into this new education concept. Go to our website and watch the short video “Better Brain”
I will be honest, we advantage we had in our district developing this PE4life program, we are an upper middle class suburban community with many resources. Although our community had resources, for years they did not value PE or support PE financially. As we changed the face of PE, the support increased each year. Now PE is treated like every other subject area in regards to importance and value to students. We had critics that said the only reason our PE program was successful because our community had money to support it. We had some advantages before we started, but we had to battle the same fights that every school in the country now fights trying to get their program respected and supported. PE4life now has a coaching package available to any school in the country that would like to duplicate our model in their community. Just contact our head office in Kansas City for details (816 472-7345)
It sounded like I was bringing this story to a close but there is so much more to tell but one particular story needs to be shared. As Paul Harvey would say, now you will hear the rest of the story (contact PE4life for the rest of the story)
Because PE4life was criticized the only reason their model worked because it was located in a suburban school system. PE4life took on the challenge to change our image. We opened a new PE4life program in an elementary school and a middle school in urban Kansas City. Most of the students are on a free and reduced lunch program. Most of the school consisted of African-American and Hispanic population. The school had good students but many students lived in a very challenging environment. When we first approached the school administration about adopting a PE4life program in their school, they were not interested. It was only after we secured funding from the corporate world, did the administration agree to adopt the PE4life program. Our only request in return, we said the elementary school had to offer daily PE. Originally the school had PE one day a week, now they had a 5 day a week PE4life program. The success of the program was beyond our belief. At the end of the first year students’ fitness scores went off the chart. For example, cardiovascular fitness improved over 200%. The fitness data impressed the administration but it was not the data the really caught their attention. The administration shared with us some amazing data. After adopting PE4life for one year, no other changes in the school day, the school recorded a 63% reduction in disciplinary referrals to the main office that year. School violence is a major issue in American schools Literally billions of dollars have been spent nation wide, hiring more police officers in schools, security cameras, staff in-services, and countless other costly progress to slow school violence. It is two bad some of these dollars were not directed to improve physical education programs. Dr Ratey assured us, fit children will behave better.
After three years of PE4life in the Kansas City elementary school, the same administration that closed the doors on our invitation, have now requested a PE4life program in every elementary school in urban Kansas City in the next three years. Most administrators do not even take the time to investigate the value of a PE4life program. The reason they are closed minded, they have no budget, and there is no time in the day to add PE, plus the do not understand the value of this NEW PE (PE4life)
To summarize, PE4life has documented and researched proof our system works, but only if it implemented in the right way. You can not cut corners, if you really want the program to work. We now tell the public, PE4life has a three dimensional approach to our success and it works and it has been duplicated in all types of schools nation wide. The question is why is PE4life not in your school.
Our three dimensions of our successful program:
- Students will be healthier
- Students will learn better
- Students will behave better
PE4life should be in every school in the country
Changing Student Bodies – One at a Time
Phil Lawler – PE 4life Academy Director
PS – In the last 4 years, I have trained schools from 40 different states and 7 foreign countries – with your help we can bring
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