| Wilber school balances wellness, PE with
other demands |
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Sunday, Mar 26, 2006 - 12:08:31 am CST
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At Wilber-Clatonia school, more than 500
students are at the center of a debate on how to balance general wellness
and physical education requirements with academics when time is short and
obesity is on the rise.
BY ART HOVEY | Lincoln Journal
Star
WILBER — As a dozen other students lift weights in Jeremy
Schroeder’s first-period physical education class, Jamie Mildward, 15, and
Kelsey Homolka, 16, retreat to a corner, to quiet conversation and the
less challenging routine of stationary bikes.
Wilber-Clatonia
sophomore Jamie has sore knees that she attributes partly to tendonitis
and partly to a doctor’s advice on the way her adolescent leg muscles are
growing.
Fellow sophomore Kelsey is recovering from a car accident
and a crushed vertebra. This volleyball, basketball and track athlete also
has a scar from the recent removal of bone chips in her knee.
As
stacks of weights crash back into rest position nearby, high school
softball player Jamie says she’s in gym clothes early in the morning “so I
can get it over with.”
Kelsey plans on far exceeding her school’s
requirement of mandatory PE for ninth-graders only. She wants to get
physical all four years.
“It usually wakes me up if I do some kind
of physical activity in the morning,” she says.
Halfway between
childhood and adulthood, these two teens are making choices that could
influence their health and vitality for the rest of their
lives.
They and some 540 Wilber-Clatonia classmates are also
centerpieces in a debate about how to balance physical education and
general wellness with academics in a world where time is short and
childhood obesity is on the rise.
Polka music plays softly in the
background in the office of School Superintendent Dave Rokusek, a former
band and vocal instructor, as he ponders that dilemma. But there is no
happy look on Rokusek’s face as he says this:
“Some of the research
indicates they will have a shorter life span than we have.”
That
research draws from enough troubling trends to fill a school
blackboard.
TV and video games. Fast food. Pop machines and sugar
cravings. Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems at younger
ages.
Tight school budgets. Two-income households. A societal drift
away from standing and moving toward sitting and watching.
“We need
more physical education instruction,” Rokusek said, “or more time so we
can give kids more physical education time.”
Julane Hill, program
specialist for health/physical education and health sciences in the
Nebraska Department of Education, speaks of educational trends of the last
five years in an urgent tone.
“The thing that’s really disturbing
to me is that we had health and physical education ingrained in schools,”
Hill said. “And as we began with statewide assessments, No Child Left
Behind, and an emphasis on academics, these programs were slowly and
systematically reduced and/or eliminated.
“Now it’s a big issue,”
Hill said of physical fitness, “but yet policy-makers are not getting the
big picture.”
What’s the big picture?
“That youth who engage
in moderate to high levels of physical activity tend to perform better in
schools.”
'You don't have much
time'
Beatrice High School and Peru State grad Lynn
Jurgens clutches his referee’s whistle as he presides over a series of
morning physical education classes for grades kindergarten through four at
Wilber.
About as quickly as 20 third-graders finish a 20-minute
game of scooter lacrosse, during which they chase whiffle balls across the
floor of the elementary gym on wheeled stools, second-graders line up to
run laps.
“Do not cut corners,” Jurgens tells them, “or you’ll have
to do an extra one.”
It’s a reminder the former Filley farm boy
could give himself as he moves through a busy morning and into an
afternoon in which he also functions as an elementary school
counselor.
“The hardest thing is you don’t have much time,” he
said.
As recently as school year
2001-02, Wilber-Clatonia
still had two full-time PE positions. Now Jurgens’ PE position is part
time. Counterpart and fellow Peru State grad Jeremy Schroeder holds the
only full-time PE job at the school.
Jurgens handles K-4 and
Schroeder 5th and 6th. They teach 7th-9th as a team, and Schroeder, also
the head football coach, takes 10th through 12th.
In tending to the
physical education of Wilber’s youngest students, Jurgens is allotted 25
minutes per grade two days a week.
“I’d like to see that doubled,”
he said. “I think they need that.”
Both men are in their first year
at Wilber-Clatonia and in their first year of trying to leave their mark
there on public education.
Both would like to see two full-time PE
positions restored.
“We’re pushing for it as a PE department,”
Schroeder said. “But, like the superintendent said, you’ve got to give to
get.”
At 32, Jurgens is proud of an upbringing that had him doing
chores and developing a work ethic each morning before school on a dairy
farm. “I think it makes a big difference,” he said.
He sees that
same trait at Wilber, where farming and raising livestock remain a part of
the local economic picture.
But he also sees more alarming things,
including kids who have to be coaxed out of the corners during his
classes.
“You see more and more of that all the time. Kids don’t
want to do anything. They’d rather sit out and watch.”
So is he
winning or losing his personal battle against widening
waistlines?
At least at this age, “I think I’m winning,” he
replied.
PE, recess time getting cut
In
2003, Julane Hill initiated an unscientific but extensive survey of
physical education realities in Nebraska.
She asked hundreds of
public and private schools how much physical education time they offered
and also how much recess time children got each school day.
One
national standard suggests 150 minutes of physical education per week at
the elementary level and 225 minutes for high school students.
“We
found out that only 16 percent of elementaries offered 150 minutes per
week,” she said. “And only 12 percent of secondary schools offered 225
minutes per week.”
About 12 percent of the responding schools had
done away with recess altogether. Another 25 percent had cut back on
recess time.
“So,” Hill said, “when you add those together, almost
40 percent had either eliminated or reduced recess. And the reason we were
provided with was increased accountability for assessment of reading,
writing and math.”
More than half the responding schools required
only one or two semesters of physical education as a graduation
requirement.
Wilber looks at wellness
policy
In his third year at Wilber-Clatonia,
Superintendent Rokusek sees an educational emphasis arising for his fourth
that has nothing to do with academic standards.
Federal law says
all schools must establish a school wellness policy and have it in place
on the first school day after June 30, 2006.
Rokusek pulls out a
list of suggestions from the school’s new wellness committee that will be
put in front of school board members at their next meeting.
Get
kids to use the walking track around the elementary playground. Cut back
on the cookies and potato chips. Eat less, eat smarter, exercise
more.
There are more than 40 suggestions overall.
“The
bottom line is you have to have a policy,” Rokusek said.
But
mandate or not, “I’d like to see us move in the direction of wellness,” he
said.
New gadgets that can monitor fat content and heart recovery
rates during exercise could add to the awareness factor.
“We’re
only part of the puzzle, but we do have them for a while,” he said of
students. “And I guess I hope for habits to form, behaviors to
form.”
Connie Stefkovich, an administrator in nutrition services
for the state Department of Education, said the U.S. Department of
Agriculture and “concern for the number of overweight kids” are behind the
wellness initiative.
“They have to have their own wellness policy,”
Stefkovich said of local schools. “It needs to cover nutrition, it needs
to cover physical activity and it needs to cover school
environment.”
How much time students get to eat lunch is part of
the school environment. Also, “Are our rewards candy or are our rewards to
go for a walk with the school principal, for example?”
Stefkovich
points to Nebraska City and Diane Schnitzer as an example for other
schools.
“Our instructors actually walk the talk,” said Schnitzer,
who heads a staff of four and Nebraska City’s K-12 physical education
program. That means “our teachers take fitness tests, just like our
students.”
Much of the emphasis is on body mass index,
cardiovascular response, setting fitness goals each school year, and a
nationally approved exercise program called Fitnessgram.
Even the
school’s seniors, who aren’t required to take a physical education class,
make individual activity plans.
“It could be that they’re going to
work out at the wellness center,” Schnitzer said. “It could be that
they’ll go swimming. It could be walking with friends.”
In all
cases, “there must be some way an adult can check it.” Overall, “our
students do really, really well as long as we keep checking and see how
they’re doing.”
Back at Wilber, Patti Schuerman, part of the class
of 1985, a member of an undefeated girls basketball team as a sophomore,
and now a school bookkeeper, is also a mother of two and the parent
representative on that school’s wellness committee.
She’s happy to
serve, “but if we don’t have parent support at home, what we’re teaching
them is not going too far.”
Schuerman hasn’t forgotten the lessons
she learned during her own physical education years.
“The thing I
can remember is I had Mrs. Anthony as a PE instructor and she made us do
25 sit-ups every day.
“And she said, in years to come, we would
thank her for that. And that was true.”
Reach Art Hovey at
523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.
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