Mr. Schroeder's Blog

Physical education classes have indeed changed since the days of dodgeball and team captains. Today, activities are less about competition and more about learning life skills. Cindy Kuhrasch, who coordinates the PETE program's elementary student teacher placements, sees physical education as "a lab for real life", where students have the opportunity to interact and practice social skills.
Philip Scruggs, assistant professor of kinesiology, charactereizes physical education as a way for kids to learn cognitive, affective, and movement skills through physically active lessons. "Physical education should be a content area where kids learn through moving, which is what distinguishes it from all other areas," Scruggs says.
Physical education class is not just for jocks anymore, either. One of the main goals of modern physical education is to encourage lifelong fitness, especially for individuals who are unlikely to play more traditional sports as adults.

Campus Connections, Focus
University fof Wisconsin

Conditioned hypereating is one of the main reasons people are unsuccessful in their efforts to lose weight. A person might follow a strict diet for a while and lose weight. But if that person does not replace the "old circuitry" by retraining the brain's reactions to food stimuli, he or she will eventually give in to the continuous bombardment of food temptations and gain all the weight back. To retrain the brain Kessler, author of The End of Overeating, suggested the following steps:

1. Determine ahead of time what you will eat on a given day and block out everything
else.
2. Figure out how much you need to eat, and stick to that amount without going back
for seconds.
3. Choose foods that satisfy rather than stimulate: whole grains, beans, vegetables,
fruit, and lean protein.
4. Practice resisting certain temptations and use self-talk: for example, tell yourself
what you will do if you see something you'd like to eat (e.g., walk away, think of
something else, have a glass of water instead).
5. Learn to recognize emotions (sadness, fatigue, anxiety) and other stimuli that
might trigger the desire to overeat so you know how to react to them.
6. Relate unhealthy foods to negative or unappealing images that will help to make
trigger foods less desireable.

Laura Strecker, AAHPERD Jan./Feb. 2010

Motor fitness is the foundation for all physical activity. Motor fitness involves balance, coordination, agility, and power. Fundamental motor fitness skills include, 1 locomotor skills, such as running,leaping, hopping, and jumping, 2 nonlocomotor skills, such as turning, twisting, swinging, and balancing and 3 movement awareness, or the abilities needed to conceptualize and form an effective response to sensory information to perform a specific motor task.

If individuals have a rich repertoire of motor fitness skills to draw from, it is easier to acquire sport skills, avoid injuries, and maintain an active lifestyle. Children who are physically active from an early age and have positive, enjoyable, and successful movement experiences in the early stages of life will likely continue to engage in and pursue activity on a regular basis. Chlidren with inadequate motor fitness skills often exclude themselves or are excluded by others from organized and free play experiences, and subsequently they are relegated to a lifetime of inactivity. Physical activity also helps combat obesity and other health problems.

There may be several causes for the decline in motor fitness among children. The appeal of watching television, playing video games, and surfing the Internet has caused many children to become more sedentary. Active participation in a broad range of movement actvities in Physical Education is essential to childrens overall development. Children can learn basic motor fitness skills when provided the appropriate physical education.

(JOPERD Jan. 2010)

National Hand Washing Awareness has occurred during the first full week of December each year since 1999. Practicing the Four Principles of Hand Awareness can help everyone to remain healthy, in spite of the flu scares. It is the Best way to prevent epidemics or pandemics:
1. Wash your hands when thay are dirty and before eating
2. Do not cough into your hands
3. Do not sneeze into your hands
4. Above all, do not put your fingers into your eyes, nose, or mouth!
Direct contamination of your mucus membranes is how infectious disease enters your body. It is not wafting through the ventilation system in the building. Let's work together to minimize the fear factor of infectious disease pandemics or seasonal illness. Keep Washing!

How Your Meal Plan Should Be Divided

The healthiest way to lose weight according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans is to reduce your daily intake by at least 500 calories. But, how should this be divided up. Your meal plan should consist of 20 to 35 percent of calories from fat; 10 to 35 percent of calories from protein and 45 to 65 percent of caolries from carbohydrates. The best ways to add volume while lowering calories are:
1. Add whole grains
2. Eat your non-starchy vegetables
3. Have a green salad
4. Include fruit
5. Eat lean proteins
6. Drink more water.

Vitality, Issue 1, 2008

Dear Parent/Guardian,
As Physical Education teacher at St. John Fisher, my goals for the coming year are not only physical fitness and exercise tests, but also the deveolpment of athletic skills through various activities. Grades Pre-4 will be learning motor and movement skills through exercise and play. Grades 5-8 will develop skills and knowledge of rules andd regulations in individual and team sports.
The students will have five to ten minutes of stretching and exercise, ten to fifteen minutes of instruction, and twenty-five minutes of a physical activity. Students on their assigned day must wear an official Physical Education uniform purchased through school, informatiom below. Lack of participation due to not being prepared will be reflected on their report card. If for some reason, a student must be out of uniform oe exempt from participation, a parent/guardian note explaining the problem will be required.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION UNIFORM
Girls and Boys: K-8 SJF gym shorts or sweatpants (blue)
SJF gym tee shirt (blue or white), sweatshirt (blue)
NO ATHLETIC SCHOOL UNIFORM ALLOWED

GYM UNIFORM SALE
Thursday August 27 6-7:30 pm
Friday August 28 6-7:30 pm
Sunday August 30 6-7:30 pm
The sale will take place in the old convent. Please enter on Fairfield side of the building.

A rural hockey team in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, Canada, recently finished its season in first place and with no trips to the penalty box for fighting. The coach teaches his players to "play by the game" and to "play clean". Even though it was not always easy to play by the rules, and despite other teams calling them "the biggest babies in the league," playing clean ended up being a winning strategy. Avoiding penalties and capitalizing on their opponents infractions actually gave the team an advantage. The teams good sportsmanship even rubbed off on other teams, who decided to also play clean in order to keep up. The coach noted "You don't need the fighting and the hits from behind to play good hockey." The team's conduct made their coach and parents proud. (Weidlich, 2009)

Fitness ought to be fun, but the process could be taken one step further for even better results. Physical education classes should be designed with high demands on fitness components, such as cardiorespitatory endurance, stength, flexibility, and motor skills. However, participation in such elements should not only be enjoyable, but should also be disguised so the students do not realize that they are doing a fitness activity. Some physical educators may find the idea of "disguising" fitness activities with fun to be inappropriate, but hiding academic lessons in enjoyable activities is a well-established educational practice. "The enjoyment of learning is something that has to be nutured. If students do enjoy the activities that strengthen their skills, they will learn more and remember it longer" (Cruey, 2007 p. 1)
As long as student engagement and learning are taking place, whether it is math, vocabulary, science, or physical fitness, disguising the learning process as fun is a useful technique.
(JOPERD, Sept. 2008)

In 2003 it was found that 24 percent of children in Chicago were overweight or obese at kindergarten entry. A major factor in childhood obesity is that children often don't understand the importance of eating healthy and exercising.
It is felt that a positive way to get the message across is the "5-4-3-2-1" message.
Five servings of fruits and vegetables, four glasses of water, three low-fat dairy products, two hours or less of screen time (TV, computer and video games) and one hour or more of exercise daily.

By Adam Becker