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President's Message: We are coming to the home stretch and ready for summer, but lets not forget that this year has been a difficult one with all anticipated budget cuts that our school board plan to do for the next school year. We have been fortunate to finally receive the support from the state for physical education but now we may not be able to utilize our resources because of the potential loss of teachers. These are the times that educators must take a stand together and support all of those on the “chopping block”. With that said lets move to the highlights of some CAHPERD events that have taken place and upcoming, year ending activities.
First, I would like to talk about our past event that took place during February at our new location, Tecolote Shores. It was our annual Fun Run; it was so pleasant to see so many schools taking part in the event. The Fun Run was a hit even though we had to change the venue. Also, members of our unit would like to thank the great volunteers from SDSU. Students reported bright and early and helped with registration, cutting fruit, and encouraged students at the finish line. We had many participants and you could see the enthusiasm of young ones as we cheer them on and as well as young mature runners put all their energy effort on something they enjoy “exercising”.
Our next event, the annual CAPHERD banquet, will take place on Thursday, May 22nd in a new location. Casa Machado is the exciting new location for the banquet that should provide a lively atmosphere to celebrate the year. Casa Machado is location on Aero drive at the Montgomery Air Field terminal. So, if you haven’t nominated someone for one of the awards, remember to stop, think, and look around to see for other teachers’ accomplishments and nominate them for making an outstanding contribution to our field. As professionals we don’t have many opportunities to recognize those who inspire our young minds. This event is also great place to interact, socialize, network, and meet new colleagues around our profession.
As the school year ends and having another successful teaching experience, some of our colleagues might consider hanging their whistle and put their hat away and venture into other new adventures. If you know someone that might retire please e-mail me kmrportera@yahoo.com so we can honor him or her for his or her dedication as Physical Educators.
Also, I would like to mention that my time has come to an end as unit president and would like to thank all of the colleagues that helped throughout this past two years. The position as unit president has flourished in many ways and I have grown as a professional thanks to all of your help. It was a great experience and I enjoyed every challenge and great memory that I have gained.
Sincerely,
Karla Martinez
Unit President 47-412
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Catch A Brain Wave Fitness Fun
: Kimbo educational Music has a terrific new exercise CD out called, Catch A Brain Wave Fitness Fun. Go to this site to check it out and even listen to a sample of one song.
Catch A Brain Wave Fitness Fun
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Nutristrategy.com
: Nutrustrategy is a website dedicated to information on diet and health. They have a terrific table on Calories Burned During Exercise which lists a multitide of exercises. The Nutirition and Diet Information offers wonderful information. Also, check out the Weight Control page.
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Are You Exercising Hard Enough ??:
Offered by Geoff McCloud
Silver Gate Elementary
The following is taken from Living Well, a publication of the SHARP COMMUNITY MEDICAL GROUP, Fall 2007
What do heart disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes,osteoperosis, and arthritis have in common? Regular, moderate exercise can help prevent and treat all of these-and many other health problems. You don't have to sprint like a racer in order to reap the benefits from aerobic exercise. A leisurly walk can be beneficial, but exercise with moderate intensity can really improve your fitness level.
What counts as moderate intensity ? It's one that burns between 31/2 and 7 calories per minute. Once you are burning more than 7 calories per minute, the activity is considered intense. A brisk walk turns into intense when you break into a jog or head up hill.
By going from a brisk clip to a fast sprint, you can further boost heart health. You don't have to work out as long or as often. Experts recommend getting 20 minutes or more of vigorous exercise at least three tmes per week. In contrast, moderate exercisers need to work out for at least 30 minutes on five or more days a week.
IF THE WORKOUT FEELS INTENSE, IT PROBABLY IS. The more vigorously you exercise, the more tired your muscles, the faster you breathe and the more you sweat. The Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) lets you rank your own exercise intensuty on a scale of 6 to 20:
Levels 12-14 are moderate...workout feels kind of hard , but doable
Level 15 and higher is vigorous...workout feels hard and you have to push yourself to continue
You can also use the talk test. If you can carry on a conversation while working out you are at a moderate intenisity level. But when doing vigorous exercise, you're too out of breathe to talk. Are you exercising hard enough ?
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CAHPERD Action Alert
: Please click the link for an important message from our state office:
CAHPERD Action Alert
You can download a sample letter here:
CAHPERD Action Alert Sample Letter
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Kinder, Gentler PE: Kinder, Gentler Phys Ed
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
By Ann Belser, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Grade school was clearly traumatic for the baby boomers.First there was new math, in which children learned the principles ofmathematics instead of memorizing results. Ask someone who studied newmath what 6 x 4 is and they might answer 30 because with new math theymight have been working in base 8 instead of base 10, in which theanswer would be 24.
Now that their children have been spared new math, there are movementsunder way for a "New P.E."
Seems the same people who were traumatized by math were also disturbed by dodge ball, a once-popular game that is only educational if players have to stone someone to death later in life.
Gym class, as it used to be called, is relatively new to America'sschools. Laura Ingalls Wilder was not out on the prairie playingkickball.
When the Presidential Physical Fitness Awards began in the schools in1966, students were suddenly being timed running 600 yards, hanging bytheir hands from bars and doing as many sit-ups as they could in 2minutes. Gym class, for much of the time, was a steady regimen ofmindless calisthenics.
"We would line up for roll call, man, it was just like being in themilitary," said Tim McCord, 45, of Titusville in Crawford County. Inthose days gym class was geared toward the more athletic students. "Wedid a wide range of things. Either you were good at them or youweren't."
Although he was short, he was one of the more athletic members of hishigh school class and was on the golf team.
Then he became a gym teacher -- one modeled on the way he was taught.He graded students on their skills in various sports and gave physicalfitness tests.
"Our whole curriculum basically catered to the athletes in our schools," he said. "I know that some of the things that I did causedridicule for some of my students."
He became the Health and Physical Education Department Chair for theTitusville schools in 1997 and was attending a lecture on the use ofheart monitors in PE when he realized there was a better way to teach gym.
By using heart monitors "we can level the playing field in our classes so that every student could be assessed based on their efforts," he
said.
He went to Naperville, Ill., which was the first school district toinstitute a new curriculum called P.E. 4 Life, a program backed by anational nonprofit organization aimed at encouraging children todevelop healthy, lifelong habits. The focus is on effort, not performance.
Then the Titusville school district agreed to spend $30,000 to converta storage area in the middle school into a wellness center withexercise bikes, stair climbers, rowing machines, elliptical trainersand weight-lifting equipment. Thirty-five heart rate monitors also were purchased.
The first day with the new equipment McCord sent a class out for a jogwith the heart monitors. He told the children to keep their heart rates at 140 beats per minute to ensure an aerobic workout.
One athletic student ignored McCord's instructions, running around thetrack and lapping a heavier student. McCord, who previously would havechided the slower student, instead yelled at the faster student because he was bringing his heart rate up too high. The slower student had kept his monitor at 140 beats per minute. McCord patted him on the back and told him to keep up the good work.
"The look on that kid's face when I told him he was doing a good job. . . " McCord said. "I knew we were on the right track."
Information from the heart monitors can be downloaded onto computers to monitor their fitness levels. They have also alerted McCord to students with potential heart problems that needed medical attention.
The program expanded to the high school the next year and the schools may include the fitness training down to fourth grade in the elementary levels. PE also is available every day.
Students are graded on effort not their ability. New software provides reports on their cardiovascular endurance, blood pressure, strength, flexibility and body composition.
P.E. 4 Life, was started by Jim Baugh, the chief executive officer of Wilson Sporting Goods. The organization is working with parents and teachers to change PE curriculums and is lobbying state governments to require daily PE classes. Representatives from more than 200 schools have visited the Naperville schools.
Pennsylvania has no specific requirements for how much time children should spend in physical education. Instead the state is finalizing a list of standards for health and fitness.
"State guidelines are general and school districts make them specific to their populations," said Sarah Jameela Martin, who is in charge of the physical education curriculum for the Pittsburgh Public Schools
"P.E. is for everyone and that is what makes it different from competitive sports, which are for the athletes," said Brenda VanLengen, the P.E. 4 Life spokeswoman. In trying to get PE incorporated in schools every day, "one of the biggest hurdles we face is there are so many people who had bad experiences" when they were in gym class. Montour and West Mifflin are among local school districts moving toward the P.E. 4 Life model.
Debbie Hunter, the department chair for health and physical educatio at Montour High School, has visited Titusville to see if it can replicate the program. Montour has 24 heart monitors that the students use in aerobics, step aerobics, cardio kick-boxing and power walking. Even though Montour is moving toward fitness, it won't eliminate teaching baseball and basketball, Hunter said, because some students enjoy competition. The district is trying to include more in the curriculum so that everyone can participate at their highest level.
"It's a whole new idea," she said. "It's very exciting to me."
Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.
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San Diego CAHPERD Announcement
: On Saturday, May 3rd, San Diego CAHPERD Unit 47-412 is sponsoring the San Diego County Middle School Physical Education Track Meet.
Over 30 middle schools from throughout San Diego County will participate in many track and field events at Mt. Carmel High School. The events are split betwwen 6th, 7th and 8th grades as well as female/male.
We would like to thank Suzanne Mullins for organizing the event and we look forward to many years of sponsoring this tremendous event for the student/athletes in our county.
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Obesity: Yesterday and Today
: Newsletter editor's note: I read this article over at the exclellent Peaceful Playgorund's blog . If you haven't already, you need to bookmark that page.
Of all the challenges to reversing our national obesity epidemic, the one that concerns me most is what I call the "distortion of normality." While constants in science (physical values or principles) are well known and don't change, life has far fewer "constants."
The constants we tend to adhere to most often are defined by our culture. Case in point: our relationships with food.
What we like to consider normal food intake and portions are far from constant. Aside from the differences between mainstream America and other countries, many of our internal definitions of "normal" change from generation to generation.
Take for example dress sizes. In 1933, the hip measurement for a size 8 dress was 33 1/2 inches. Today, a size 8 hip measurement is 38 inches. The average American today weighs 24 pounds more than in 1960.
But consider food and drink portions. A serving size of soda in 1956 was 8 ounces. Today, the standard size is 20 ounces. The standard adult meal serving at McDonald's in 1971, which consisted of a hamburger, bag of french fries and an 8-ounce drink, is what we now call a child's meal. Read the labels; many children's fast food meals are really adult portions.
Besides humongous soft-drink cup sizes, what about those bagels or doughnuts the size of spares tires on a Volkswagen? Or muffins the size of a grapefruit? Bags of chips are larger than ever, cookies seem as big as Frisbees; burgers have two, sometimes three patties stacked on the bun.
Now consider this: To your child, these portions are the definition of "normal" they will grow up with and pass on to their children.
Anyone with this sense of history should not be surprised that we're all getting larger. By the end of the first year of life, the typical American baby is overfed by 250 calories a day.
According to a recent study, factors known to have the greatest effect on encouraging childhood obesity include 1) being Hispanic, 2) having an overweight mother, 3) taking a baby bottle to bed, and 4) having a low or high (more than 9 pounds) birth weight. While three of these can't be changed, one can. Breast feeding reduces the risk of child obesity by 4 percent for every month the infant is nursed. It also helps mom lose weight gained during the pregnancy.
While "normal" is defined by the times and our culture, we can't escape one universal constant: Newton's first law of thermodynamics.
Simply stated, energy cannot be created or destroyed, it only changes form. Energy, in the form of excess calories, is either burned up (typically by exercise) or is turned into body tissue with all the extra calories becoming fat.
We live in a fast food and processed food subculture, driven by speed, cost and convenience. In this kind of culture, obesity, or at least a greater acceptance of it, has become the new normal.
In 1986, 55 percent of Americans considered overweight people less attractive. Today, only 24 percent of Americans carry the same beliefs. Attitudes are changing and we've become much more accepting of obesity. Is that how overweight and obesity will become the "new normal" of the 21st century?
I've had kids brought into my clinic because the parents are concerned that their child was "too small" when in reality their son or daughter was normal for height and weight, but smaller than their siblings, cousins or friends. Because so many of the family members are oversized or obese, any members who are normal by standard growth charts are looked upon as underweight or too small.
Every few decades, new charts for defining normal growth and development are created. When the next charts are issued, childhood overweight and obesity will then truly become part of the medical establishment's definition of normality.
The explosion of food portion sizes and the calories that accompany it create an imbalance in our kids' perception of what is appropriate versus what is normal. Is it "normal" for your child to consume a single bag of microwave popcorn while drinking a 20-ounce soda? Read the nutrition facts label on each product and you'll see that those two items have enough calories for almost three adults.
The standard candy bars are 100 percent larger than just a few years ago; and with 100 percent more calories, too. Again, remember that these food experiences will define and shape your child's perception of what is normal.
Child obesity is the new "normal" of the 21st century. It will remain that way if portion sizes are uncontrolled or are not checked by parents and in home attitudes about proper eating. Many experts say that we live in a toxic food environment.
Make the home an oasis from the problem, not its focal point. Failure to do so will continue to drive higher rates of early childhood obesity, Type 2 diabetes, early heart disease and a shortened life expectancy.
Dr. Stephen Ponder, who has Type 1 diabetes, has been a pediatric endocrinologist for 20 years. He is director of the Children's Diabetes and Endocrine Center of South Texas at Driscoll Children's Hospital. Contact him at 694-4864 or stephen.ponder@dchstx.org
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