Dear Texas School Health Advocates,

We need you! (And just for a few minutes…)

House Bill 1018, designed to propel the work of School Health Advisory Councils (SHAC) throughout the state, has been recommended for referral to the Senate Local and Consent (having made it *almost* ALL the way through the legislative process).  If it is not set for the Senate and Local Consent Calendar TODAY, we will lose the opportunity to support our schools, students, and communities in this proactive and positive way.

It won’t happen without your help.

HB 1018

• Establishes a SHAC subcommittee that aims to improve current and future physical activity and fitness programming for students and staff while strengthening existing policies and programs that improve student health.
• Asks the SHAC to review and make recommendations regarding the value of resource and revenue-generating joint (land) use agreements.
• Reminds school districts of the requirement to implement SHACs with due diligence (i.e. meets 4 times/year, parent as chair/co-chair, etc.).
• Provides organizations, schools, and state agencies with the opportunity to have a dialogue with school district leadership about making health a priority.

Please call, email and/or visit one of the following (especially the chair) of the Senate Administration Committee today to ask that they assign HB 1018 to the Local and Consent Calendar.  If we are unable to get it assigned to the calendar today, it will likely fade away.

Phone Script: “Please assign HB 1018 to the Senate Local and Consent Calendar.   It costs the schools NO money, provides resources and potential revenue for school districts, is entirely volunteer-based, is good for schools and students, and has universal backing by schools and constituent groups.  It has received all favorable votes.”

HB 1018 is what we’ve been waiting for…so it is GO time!

Marissa Rathbone

Director of Policy and Programs, ACTIVE Life

Our students are experiencing mental health problems stemming from bullying and the need to assimilate difficult social norms; they are subjected to infectious diseases and spreading viruses like influenza and norovirus; they are engaging in risky and potentially fatal behaviors that involve drugs and alcohol.

In short: they are failing to make healthy lifestyle choices on their own. But there is an answer: coordinated school health.

Coordinated school health is a comprehensive strategy that aims to improve the overall health and wellness of our students using eight core components:

1. Health education
2. Physical education
3. Health services
4. Nutrition services
5. Counseling and psychological services
6. Healthy school environment
7. Staff wellness
8. Family/community involvement

These components—the Great Eight—conspire to inspire real change in your school’s health program. Take a look at what results after you institute a coordinated health program in your school.

Better Grades

It has been proven that a student’s grades can be linked to his or her overall health. Ergo, the better the student’s health is, the better her grades are. It follows, then, that any program designed to improve a student’s health will also improve academic success.

Closing the Achievement Gap

Since coordinated school health programs are blind to race, gender, and ability, they succeed in bridging the achievement gap between these demographics. First, everyone gets the same opportunities to speak with professional counselors, eat the same nutritious meals, use the same emergency services, and learn the same information.

Second, since coordinated school health programs include a community and family wellness component, over time they can help change social or cultural norms responsible for poor health and poor grades, which is especially evident in environments where access to nutritious and fresh food is rare.

Fewer Health Problems

But let’s not focus on just academic success. After all, if the health of your students is improving, that’s cause for celebration on its own. Still, it’s easy to say that your students will become healthier. Let’s look at how:

Basis in Education

From a physical health standpoint, your kids will benefit from PE classes that improve fitness by combining core competencies like motor skills, strength, endurance, critical thinking, teamwork and leadership. They’ll also have extensive emergency care services in the event of an injury, whether it’s a trained school nurse or another medical professional.

For mental health, students will have the chance to speak with counselors and psychologists who can recognize myriad disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, and potentially dangerous events, such as bullying. These professionals can also recognize problems at home that affect the physical or mental well-being of the student.

In addition, a coordinated school health program focuses on classroom-based education wherein students will learn how to make the right decisions to lead a healthy lifestyle. That includes information about alcohol, drugs, and tobacco, sexuality, violence and injury prevention, nutrition, and physical activity.

This basis in education is just the beginning of how your students become healthier. The more they know about how to stay healthy and make the right decisions, the better they will be able to bring that information home with them and practice making those decisions in their own lives.

Higher Quality of Life

Usually, schools offer a patchwork system of uncoordinated programs that have no common goals. While this can improve certain aspects of your students’ education, its success pales in comparison to the school-wide effect of the coordinated school health program. By teaching the right information and providing an extensive support network for your students, you’ll create an environment that lets them thrive.

When a school has implemented all eight components of coordinated school health, living a healthy lifestyle becomes second nature to the students. The culture of the school changes, and before long it is acceptable to seek help for mental health problems. Soon, it’s no problem to choose a salad for lunch instead of French fries. And before long, it’s okay to decide not to drink or do drugs.

Better health, better grades; better health, better lives. That is what is so great about coordinated school health.

Click Here to learn more about the SPARK’s Coordinated School Health Initiative and the resources available for educators and administrators.

During that time, they are learning colors, animals, numbers, and shapes; calculus, biology, world history, physics, and Shakespeare. They learn how to communicate, how to lead, how to follow, how to make decisions, and how to make friends.

They learn how to live healthy, happy, and rewarding lives—or do they? Perhaps not: schools without a coordinated school health program are missing an essential element.

Imagine a space shuttle blasting off from Cape Canaveral destined for the moon. Let’s say the shuttle itself represents an average education. In that case, an integrated coordinated school health program (CSHP) is the rocket that puts that shuttle into orbit. Without a CSHP, they could be missing vital educational components they need to reach the stars.

If you’re concerned that your school isn’t giving students an educational rocket-boost, don’t worry. We’ve detailed below how easy it is to start a coordinated school health program.

Focusing on your students

The point of a CSHP is to create an atmosphere in school where students can immerse themselves in all they need to know to stay healthy for the rest of their lives. That includes so much more than providing playtime at recess or doing jumping jacks in PE class.

There are eight facets to a complete CSHP: health education; physical education; health services; nutrition services; counseling, psychological, and social services; healthy and safe school environment; health promotion for staff; and family/community involvement.

These components include things like providing nutritious meals, education on avoiding injury and drug and alcohol use, setting up emergency services for physical and mental problems, and even educating teachers on how they can be positive role models by assimilating healthy lifestyles themselves.

Now that you’re focused, it’s time to secure administrative support.

Committing to your students

The support and commitment of your school’s superintendent and principal are vital to the success of a CSHP program. It’s these people who can organize an action plan, allocate funding and appoint people to oversee the various aspects of the program.

They will also be able to communicate with local, state, and national leaders to ensure your program is compliant with governmental guidelines.

Now that you have the support you need, it’s time to create a plan.

Planning for your students

Every school is different. You may already have a complete nutritional program in practice, or your counseling and emergency services might already be in full swing. As a result, your health education and staff wellness programs are lacking.

Prioritize your specific needs and goals with your administration and the people they’ve appointed to oversee your CSHP. Think about the following objectives:

• Prioritize based on your students’ needs
• Catalogue your available resources to aid in decision making
• Be realistic with your goals
• Establish a timeline for your plan
  • Implement in stages if necessary
• Create criteria to use to determine whether your goals are met or not

Remember, students spend an enormous portion of their lives in school (secondary only to the time spent at home). Your coordinated school health program should be designed to improve the educational aspects of your curriculum, but it should also endeavor to improve the social climate. The more socially acceptable it is for your students to be healthy and care about living healthy lives, the more engaged they will be.

Now that you have your CSHP plan, it’s time to educate your educators.

Training for your staff and the community

The lynchpin to this whole concept is your teachers themselves. They not only serve as the primary source of information for your students, but they’re also role models. Do more than just give your staff the info they need to pass on through classroom lessons; give them the same education the students get.

If your teachers are healthier, their habits will pass on to their students. Healthy teachers also mean lower health care costs. Lower costs means more cash to put into underperforming areas of your CSHP program. And that filters back to the students.

Instituting a coordinated school health program is difficult, especially if it’s an entirely new concept to your school. But if it’s done correctly, it can help your students achieve better grades, live healthier lives, and spread their knowledge into the community and create a healthier out-of-school environment as well.

Next Steps: Getting Started

Whether your school has just started down the path to wellness or has already organized a wellness team, SPARK can help you move forward with building a comprehensive CSHP. It all starts with our Ignite A Healthy Environment program, where we begin with capacity building and a thorough analysis of your current CSH program to learn more about your particular needs and challenges.  It then aligns the health and wellbeing goals with your overall school improvement plan using the The Healthy School Report Card developed by ASCD. Click Here to learn more about the Ignite A Healthy Environment Program.

Get in touch with one of our helpful educators to get started. After all, every educational rocket launch begins with a SPARK.

The CDC’s eight components of Coordinated School Health are as follows:

Health education

Health education encompasses many topics, including alcohol and drug abuse, personal health and wellness, mental and emotional health, sexual health, and of course, healthy eating and nutrition. Students learn how to make health-promoting decisions and why those decisions are important. Our partner, Healthy Lifestyle Choices, is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping youth and families make these important decisions.

Physical education

Physical education is much more than physical activity; the educational aspect is integral to long-term physical health. Students engage in activities that help them become more knowledgeable and aware of their physical well-being, as well as focus on acquiring new skills and improving existing ones.

Plus, many secondary skills are learned through this process: leadership, teamwork, communication, strategy, critical thinking, and many more.

Health services

To foster a truly health-conscious environment in your school, you need to include health services that focus on preventing illness by promoting sanitary conditions and access to emergency care for injury.

Moreover, the more education you can give students on the ways to remain disease and injury free, the more complete your plan will be.

Nutrition services

Nutritious food options help maintain healthy lifestyles. By replacing unhealthy food options with healthy, locally sourced foods in your school’s nutrition program, you’re helping your students learn about healthy eating—a skill they can bring home and spread to their own families.

Following certain guidelines, like the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, is a good place for your nutrition services to start. Our partner, Healthy Kids Challenge, also offers tons of great information about how to help kids make healthy choices.

Depending on your area, the availability of nutritious food could be limited. Talk to SPARK representatives for guidance on how to implement nutrition services in your school.

Counseling, psychological, and social services

Complete well-being includes more than physical and nutritional health. In this case, counseling, psychological, and social services are meant to improve students’ mental, emotional, and social health, and provide trusted professionals that are there to guide students.

These services also help to prevent and recognize certain disorders that relate to health and wellness, including eating disorders and physical ailments that would normally go untreated.

Healthy and safe school environment

A healthy school environment means many things: starting with the physical property, as in ensuring your school’s building and grounds are free of dangerous elements (biological, physical, or otherwise); and ending with the social environment within that building, including the health culture perpetuated by your student body.

Since it’s often difficult for school administrators to get a grasp on what needs to change in order to create that health-conscious culture, our SPARK educators provide excellent resources.

Health promotion for staff

You can’t change your culture without also improving the ability of your role models to demonstrate healthy lifestyles to your students. By focusing on staff wellness, you’ll ensure your teachers are not only passing their experiences on to their students, but that your teachers are also reaping the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.

And the healthier your employees are, the lower your overall health care costs will be. This is potentially a budgetary golden egg; not only will your staff members be healthier, but you can use those health care savings to improve other areas of your organization.

Family/community involvement

You can engage your students in health-conscious activities during the school day, but there will be little positive change if the parents aren’t also educated on the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle.

The same goes with the community as a whole; there are some great ways to get your community’s leaders involved in construction of safe walkways, bike lanes, and playgrounds for kids and parents alike to enjoy.

With family/community involvement, students (and their families and friends) practice healthy lifestyle techniques that will increase their quality of life.

SPARK’s Coordinated School Health Initiative

Inspired by the CDC’s CSH strategy, SPARK’s CSH Initiative focuses on two desirable outcomes:

1. 1. Environmental Change: How do we create environments that foster healthy eating, offer myriad physical activity opportunities, and facilitate consistent practice of wellness pursuits?
2. 2. Behavior Change: Within those environments, individuals are faced with choices every minute of the day. After basic knowledge is disseminated (i.e., eat less, move more, get inoculated, etc.) what efforts are made to teach people the skills they need to practice healthful behaviors on and off campus?

How Does CSH Work?

In order to develop a Coordinated School Health strategy for your organization, you must assess your school’s current standing in various areas to see what needs improvement. For SPARK’s CSHI, we work with ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) using their Healthy School Report Card (HSRC) to assess where schools stand in regard to CSH.

Your school might shine in the physical education component but lack access to healthy food or counseling services. We’re here to help you figure out what areas need improvement and develop a plan accordingly.

Talk to SPARK representatives today to address these components and goals for YOUR unique school or agency.

I just attended a highly-motivational PHA Summit, highlighted by a rousing talk from First Lady Michelle Obama.  I will share the big physical activity news at the Summit. There were three announcements. The first happened the previous week when PHA announced Let’s Move Active Schools. This is a partnership of several organizations that will provide small grants to schools to increase physical activity. The big news was Nike’s contribution of $50 million to support this program over five years. I think it is significant that a company is making a commitment at this level to school physical activity. My hope is that some schools can leverage the small grant into sufficient funds to train teachers in evidence-based programs like SPARK that will create long-lasting improvements.

The second announcement was that Reebok made a $30 million commitment to expanding its BOKS before school program. Perhaps other sporting goods companies will realize that investing in physical activity programs is good for their companies as well as great for kids.

The third news item was the release of the DHHS report, Strategies to Increase Physical Activity Among Youth. This was a literature review that confirmed that school interventions such as comprehensive multi-component programs and active physical education are the approaches with the best evidence of effectiveness.  There was suggestive evidence for interventions in preschool and childcare settings and for supportive built environments such as walkable neighborhoods, parks, and facilities for active transportation. Thus, there are reasons to invest in these programs, but they should be evaluated. Other approaches such as family-based, health care, and after school programs had insufficient evidence in general. But of course there is evidence that the SPARK after school program does get kids active. This new report is getting a lot of attention and should convince more school administrators to invest in evidence-based physical activity programs. Use the report in your advocacy.

Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Midcourse Report

PAG Midcourse Report Overview

Related evidence was published recently in American Journal of Preventive Medicine. This literature review by David Bassett and colleagues computed the average effect of various youth physical activity interventions in terms of minutes per day of physical activity, mostly measured objectively by accelerometers or observation. Physical education interventions were at the top of the scale. However, PE by itself was not enough to provide the 30 minutes of physical activity that schools should be expected to deliver. Bassett’s findings can be used to put together a menu of programs, including recess and classroom activity breaks that can provide students the activity they need.  In other words, school officials have many options for putting together a comprehensive approach that is appropriate for their needs.

Back to the PHA Summit. I moderated a session on physical activity programming that was well attended. I gave a brief account of my own background as co-founder of SPARK 23 years ago. I informed the audience that we demonstrated that SPARK was effective, and now students in many thousands of schools nationwide are benefitting on a daily basis. The three speakers represented Up2Us, PlayWorks, and the Y of Greater New York City. They are all doing great work, but SPARK is reaching more students than any of their programs. We need multiple ways of getting kids active, but I’m proud to be associated with SPARK, which continues to innovate and lead the field.

I encourage all of you to check out the website for the PHA Summit and stay in contact with the leading organizations in the childhood obesity prevention and physical activity promotion movement. http://ahealthieramerica.org/summit/about-the-summit/

One last thought. At the recent Active Living Research Conference, we played the “Help! We Need PE” video written by Monica Lounsbery, starring our own Thom McKenzie, and drawn and produced beautifully by Tom Racine of SPARK. You will enjoy watching it, and you may want to share it with others. Two thumbs up.  http://www.youtube.com/user/sparksandiego

Jim Sallis

http://sallis.ucsd.edu (see my completely renovated website)

1) Fair and Equitable — Really?

Presenter: Paul Rosengard and Kymm Ballard

Wednesday, April 24, 2013: 3:15 PM-5:15 PM

Convention Center: Exhibit Hall C

2) School Policies, Environment, and Physical Education and Recess Time

Presenter: Thom McKenzie

Thursday, April 25, 2013: 10:55 AM

201AB (Convention Center)

3) Start Your Engine with A Healthy School Report Card

Presenter: Julie Frank

Thursday, April 25, 2013: 2:15 PM-4:15 PM

Convention Center: 206AB

4) It Was 20 Years Ago Today

Presenter: Paul Rosengard and Thom McKenzie

Thursday, April 25, 2013: 4:30 PM-5:30 PM

Convention Center: 207CD

5) Health Optimizing Physical Education: A New Curriculum Model

Presenter: Thom McKenzie

Friday, April 26, 2013: 8:45 AM-10:00 AM

Convention Center: 203A

6) Driving Towards a Healthier Generation Through Technology & Exergames

Presenter: Aaron Hart

Friday, April 26, 2013: 10:15 AM-12:15 PM

Convention Center: 217A

7) Effective Affective—Standards 5 and 6 in Secondary PE

Presenter:  Aaron Hart

Saturday, April 27, 2013: 8:45 AM-10:00 AM

Convention Center: Ballroom CD

Please use the following guidelines to determine if your school district or agency would be a good fit to utilize the PEP Grant.

1.  Have you read the 2013 PEP Application?

If no, please click here for the application, and click here for the Federal Register notice.

If YES, go onto the next step.

2.  Is your agency a Local Education Agency (LEA) or Community Based Organization (CBO) as defined by the PEP Grant?

If no, please visit the SPARK Grant-Finder Tool to find other applicable grants for your agency.

If YES, please go onto the next step.

3.  Does your agency have a dedicated and committed Central Office contact (i.e. full-time Health/PE Supervisor/Coordinator/Administrator) to support a federal grant?  This person must be ready to spend 40-50 hours until April 12, 2013 to complete the grant.

If no, please visit the SPARK Grant-Finder Tool to find other applicable grants for your agency.

If YES, please go onto the next step.

4.  Has your LEA (or if you are a CBO, the LEA you are working with) completed, or are you in the process of completing, the following CDC assessment tools?

• School Health Index (Modules 1-4)
• Physical Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (PECAT)
• Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT) (Healthy Eating Module)

If no, please click on the hyperlinks above to start working on the required tools so your agency is ready for the PEP 2014 application.  In the meantime, please visit the SPARK Grant-Finder Tool to find other applicable grants for your agency.

If YES, please go onto the next step.

5. Is your agency able to get buy-in from all PE teachers or leaders to gather student data during the three years of the PEP Grant on the following assessments?

• Multi-Day Pedometer Step Data for students in grades K–12
• 3 Day Physical Activity Recall Survey for students in students in grades 5–12
• Presidential Youth Fitness Program assessment for all students
• Youth Risk Behavior Survey nutrition-related questions for High School students
• Fruit and vegetable consumption survey for students in grades K–8

Each of the above surveys must be completed 2 times annually. During the first year, grantees have an additional data collection period prior to program implementation to collect baseline data.

If YES, please go onto the next step.

6. Do you have the required “Community Partnerships” as defined in the PEP application?

Minimum Partners include:

• An LEA (local educational agency)
• At least one Community Based Organization
• A local public health entity
• The LEA‘s food service or child nutrition director
• The head of the local government

If no, start to work on those partnerships.  Schedule a meeting with them so you are ready to apply for next year.  In the meantime, please visit the SPARK Grant-Finder Tool to find other applicable grants for your agency.

If YES, please go onto the next step.

7. Do you have the required ‘matching funds’ (10% in year 1, 25% in years 2-3)?  Please see what’s eligible for matching funds in the PEP application.

If YES, please go onto the next step.

8. Are you looking for the only researched-based Prek-12^th Grade physical education program to implement in your agency?

If YES, you are ready to contact SPARK.

Please visit www.sparkpe.org for more information on the SPARK programs.

You can email spark@sparkpe.org or call 1-800-SPARK-PE (772-7573) and a SPARK representative will consult with you on your PEP Grant.

Please also visit http://www.sparkpe.org/grants/pep-grant-info/ on how SPARK aligns with PEP, including the PECAT, HECAT, testimonials and more.

I did a quick database search in our professional journals for the term “NEW PE” used in article titles. It has been used a lot! Among the top 7 results I found a title from 1979, another from 1990, another from 1999, and more recently, 2007. “Enough Already with ‘New PE’ Rhetoric!” I say, “Amen!”

As good as the tagline may have seemed at the time (every 10 years or so since the 1940s), this marketing strategy hasn’t worked. Are students healthier than they were in 1979? Nope. Are they more active than they were in 1990? Nope. Are they more skilled and/or physically literate than they were in 1999? Nope. Do school boards everywhere value PE? Definitely NoPE!

I’ve visited a lot of PE programs during my tenure in this profession and I’d like to give my thoughts based on observations (and maybe even vent some). There is one thing that defines every outstanding PE program that I’ve ever seen. It’s not high-tech heart rate monitors. It’s not magnificent ExerGaming options. It’s not even a 22-pound manual of games and activities. IT IS a passionate educator working tirelessly to improve the lives of her or his students. In short – HOPE.

HOPE that the lesson plans that are implemented will provide a spark for learning, a jolt toward physical activity, and a thunderclap for lifelong wellness. HOPE that the children we teach will go out into the world and live healthy and productive lives. HOPE that young adults will find a joy and satisfaction in routine physical activity. This sort of teaching MIGHT include heart rate monitors and DDR systems. It MIGHT include SPARKfit or cross-country skis. It MIGHT even include old-school playground games—if they were delivered with passion and joy to a new generation.

Is it really that simple? Does successful teaching really rely on things that we as individuals can control? If so, why do we continue to struggle as a profession? Why aren’t our students more active? Why is physical education constantly under attack?

My observations tell me that too many PE programs lack HOPE. There are many great programs that are led by passionate teachers, but there are many being led by teachers that have had the HOPE sucked out of them. Their programs have become HOPEless.

Don’t get me wrong – I know the path we’ve chosen isn’t an easy one. There are demands, there are requirements, and there are unreasonable mandates.

Guess what? That’s the way it’s been for 30 years (maybe 50+). It’s what we all signed up for. Kids aren’t the same as they used to be – I get it. However, we are professional educators. This is the path we’ve chosen. Here’s some old-school wisdom – let’s suck it up and move forward.

Here’s my plea to any and all PE teachers. Teach with HOPE and passion. If you’ve lost your HOPE, get it back. Go to a conference, sit and talk shop with some passionate colleagues. If you can’t find something that works – please change your job. Move aside and make room for the more HOPEful. At a minimum – don’t poison the next generation of PE teachers with your toxic culture of laziness and excuses. If these words offend you, maybe it’s time for a gut-check.

Thank you so much to each and every HOPE-filled teacher out there – there are thousands of us. Let’s unite and carry on with pride and passion. Let there be HOPE – Health Optimizing Physical Education.

What do YOU think about “New PE”? Feel free to leave your comments below:

-Aaron Hart, SPARK Development Team Leader

PS – I’d like to thank Dr. Matthew Cummiskey of West Chester University for his HOPEful work and passion. This Blog article is not intended to discredit or disregard his work or the good work of others who have used the term, “The New PE.” Please check out the good work of Dr. Cummiskey at www.thenewpe.com. And another special thanks to Dr. Thom McKenzie who created the HOPE acronym (Health Optimizing Physical Education). If you want to find out more about the concept of HOPE PE, see:

Sallis, J. F., McKenzie, T. L., Beets, M. W., Beighle, A., H., Erwin, H., & Lee, S. (2012). Physical education’s role in public health: Steps forward and backward over 20 years and HOPE for the Future. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 83(2), 125-135.