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=Physical Education Updates and Information for K-12!=

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American Heart Month []

National Girls and Women in Sports Day! Celebrate [] Fighting Obesity in Schools- great article [] Improving Childhood Heath- a battle we need to fight! []

PE Metrics Assessing National Standards 1-6 in Secondary School This brand-new resource extends PE Metrics assessments to the Secondary level, allowing you to tap into valid and reliable assessments for evaluating middle school and high school students' progress toward meeting the National Standards. Includes: Ready-to-use assessments addressing the basic skills that students should have in middle and high school. CD-ROM full of assessments covering student performance toward all 6 National Standards, including test banks for easy reproduction. Access to online video clips that offer motion analysis, and depict acceptable performance and common errors for each Standard 1 skill. []

NASPE Highlights at the 126th National Convention & Exposition Professional development highlights include: · NASPE/NCATE Aligning Assignments, Assessments & Rubrics with Initial PETE Standards on March 29 · NCACE Coaching Education Accreditation Workshop on March 30th · Physical Best for Higher Education: Integrating PE into PETE Curricula on March 30 · Physical Best Specialist Workshop on March 29th · Double the PLEASURE, Double the FUN: PB for Secondary PE · PIPElineWorkshop: Assessment Strategies: K-12 Physical Education on March 29

Other NASPE Highlights include: · All AAHPERD Special Events · Early Childhood Day, Elementary and Secondary PE Days and a Coaching Education Day · NASPE town hall meetings · The Academy Forums · PE2020 - Leadership in Physical Education for the Next Decade · Introducing PE Metrics: Assessing National Standards 1-6 in Secondary School! · College/University Instructional Physical Activity Program Social and Business Meeting · Visit the NASPE Pavilion to tell about your favorite NASPE book to be entered to win a great prize!

Mobile Apps SportyPal - Available for BlackBerry, Android, and iOS (iPhone/iPod) SportyPal is an easy to use intuitive application for your mobile phone. You activate it when you start your running, cycling, walking, rollerblading or similar exercise. In two simple clicks it will start to log and map your position, movement, distance, tempo and calories burned. It will not affect normal operation of your mobile phone, so you can still listen to music, receive and initiate calls and messages. When you finish exercising, the collected performance information will be stored on your mobile. Later you can review it, compare it with other exercises or check your best performance achievements. SportyPal will present each exercise in a map view, draw elegant graphics charts of your performance or present summarized information. SportyPal is intuitively designed to assist you improve your performance in running, cycling, blading, walking, skiing or other workouts involving similar activities. The real brilliance of SportyPal comes with the web integration. You have a possibility to upload your workouts on the internet with a simple click of a button on your mobile phone. Registering to SportyPal web application will enable you to have instant access to your workouts performance and maps from anywhere. The web application provides additional functionality for analysis of your fitness workouts. February Web Sites Free Resources: Learning about Mobile Software [] Recommended Magazines [] Free Photos for Education [] Free Web Hosting [] If you know of a school or program that might be interested in getting funds for a running club- this is a great opportunity for them. The 2011 application is now up and running on the ING website. Please visit: [] where you can find the link that will take you to the new online application! There are a few changes this year-one obviously being the application process. We have gone online and this process will allow you to start your application, save it and come back to it later as well. It will also help ensure that you have all the pieces of your application so you will be able to be considered for a 2011 grant. All pieces of the application must be done in order to submit it! A few of the new changes this year-the program will be open for grades K-8, but you must have at least 25 eligible participants in grades 4-8 (in order to do accurate PACER testing) to apply. This year there will also be a sliding scale in regards to funding. All schools chosen to receive a 2011 grant will receive the upfront $1,000 check to start your program. The second installment will be determined by how many eligible kids complete the program. If your school has 25-49 eligible students finishing the program, you will get $500. If you have 50-99 eligible students finish the program, you will receive $1,000. If your program has 100 or more eligible students, your second installment will be $1,500. This year we will also require proof of a culminating event-it can be pictures, news article, etc. Most of you already have submitted that if you won in the past anyways since you love to share about your fabulous running programs! Another change is that the program must be offered a minimum of 2 days/week if it is a before or after school program. If the program is held during school time (i.e., a PE class) the program must be offered a minimum of 3 days/week.

//**Journals, Articles, essays:**//

SAVING PHYSICAL EDUCATION
As I write it’s no pleasure to report that House Bill 1025, now under review in the Washington State Legislature, proposes to cut the requirement for school districts to offer K-8 physical education. If passed, it would give school districts the right to create their own policy "regarding access to nutritious foods and opportunities for developmentally appropriate exercise." I doubt it will pass, not much does these days, but this news does reflect the sorry state of affairs public school physical education too often finds itself in today. How far would a proposal to eliminate English as a required school subject go among state legislators? How about math? Nowhere. It would be viewed as absurd. Voters would question their representatives' sanity. In today's world students obviously need reading, writing, and math skills. But why so obvious? It's not as if there's something students have to read as adults. There's nothing they have to compute. People around the world can, and do, get by without these skills as they have for centuries throughout the history of civilization. So why are they so important today? I'm guessing it's due to a belief that these skills will enhance the quality of our children's lives. Sure, they can live perfectly well without them. But they will live a lot better with them. Reading, writing, and mathematics are a vital part of becoming "educated" which itself isn't an end, but rather a means to an end. Educated children possess knowledge and skills that improve the quality of their lives. Education prepares them to be productive and successful future citizens. What about physical education? Why don't we see the same public support? Every year, in some state or in some school district, physical education is threatened with being cut. Maybe it begins with someone who had a bad personal physical education experience as a child? But if so, why do 'PE cutting proposals' gather so much support? It's tempting, but naïve, to believe that physical education detractors are all fools. They aren't. Which begs the question, "Why do people of above average intelligence, who are concerned about education, believe that students would be better off without school physical education?" Is it true, as circus owner P.T. Barnum reportedly said, that you can fool some of the people all of the time? What's scary is the thought that these repetitious efforts to cut physical education might reflect a different, but more insidious threat, to our professional future. Amazingly, PE cutting efforts go on when almost daily we learn more about the negative consequences of sedentary living. And I don't just refer to physical health. It's becoming clearer that people who don't move enough suffer all sorts of undesirable social, emotional, intellectual, financial, and yes - physical and health consequences. But just for a moment, thinking only about health care, it's clear the nation is headed for economic catastrophe - total derailment - if we don't regroup and focus on wellness rather than sickness; prevention instead of treatment. Does this mean we all need to do a much better job justifying physical education as the solution to our health malaise? Maybe. But maybe that's only part of the problem. Is the problem the message or the messengers? What about the possibility that the public understands the threats of sedentary and unhealthy living, realizes that something must be done, but just doesn't see school physical education as the solution? And why should they? Where's the evidence justifying physical education's place in our public schools? At best it's weak. Think about it. What if our pleas to be taken seriously were, well… taken seriously? Maybe it's lucky that no one really listens to us. If they did they might ask for more than anecdotal evidence. In contrast, it's easy to justify teaching math. When was the last time anyone questioned requiring math in the school curriculum? Examples of math skills and knoviewed, not just as worthwhile, but as essential. The same is true with language and literature. It doesn't matter where you learn them or who the teacher is; reading, writing, and math skills are identifiable, assessable, reportable, and comparable. And assess and study these outcomes, we do. Not so with physical education. What do students learn in physical education? Rarely can we visit two neighboring schools and identify the skills in common that kids in both schools are learning. In fact, in most places we can't even watch classes taught by two different teachers in the same school and see consistent learning outcomes. Forget even thinking about being able to explain the learning occurring in an entire school district's program, or physical education in different cities - much less an entire state, region, or country. Sadly, that's a huge impediment to us being taken seriously. We are convinced that what we do is worthwhile, even if it looks very different from the next person, but we struggle to convince others. Are we deluding ourselves? Acting like the Emperor who, convinced he is wearing some fine new clothes, parades around naked in the famous Hans Christian Anderson tale? Why can't others see our importance? What's wrong with them? Like trying to explain something to non-English speakers. In frustration we may talk louder, when it's not their hearing that's the problem. Jo Anne Owens-Nauslar, former AAHPERD President, has many times challenged us to recognize that "If the horse is dead, dismount." Instead, we persist with the same inconsistent messages. Only when it's too late - threatened with extinction - do we realize we have a problem. Often it's too late. We try laboriously to backtrack. We implore for continuance. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail. But then the story repeats itself as it has done for decades. Can we delay the inevitable? What's to be done? Well first, we've got to sort out in our own minds where we are going with physical education, and why. Twice weekly, or even daily, physical education classes aren't going to solve obesity. Heck, they aren't even going to keep most children from becoming increasingly slothful and moderately tubby. PE classes are not the solution to getting kids to meet the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity. Neither are we going to improve scores in math and reading by making kids count and read task cards in the gym. That just decreases their physical activity. Sadly, physical education classes also aren't going to develop character traits such as ethics, leadership, honesty, etc., without a whole lot more class focus on these objectives. Classes that consist of kids playing games of basketball might develop some interesting characteristics, but they sure won't lead to the kind of positive personality development many people believe is possible through physical education and sports. And we know that 3-week skills units are no way to develop competent and confident skillful movers or game players. Unfortunately, solid evidence supporting the justification for including physical education in our public schools is elusive at best. Truthfully, unlike English or math teachers, we can't stand in front of our detractors and prove them wrong. In honesty we probably don't even want to try, because like the Emperor we risk our nakedness being publicly revealed. It's depressing, but not hopeless. Our future is in our hands. We do have a choice. We can continue with the status quo and simply anticipate annually hearing about, and fighting, physical education program cuts. Because, let there be no doubt, that's what's going to happen. Everything about today's educational trends suggests accountability is not going away. If we choose to continue along the same path of waiting then reacting to threatened program cuts, we need to quit whining. We need to quit feigning surprise. It will continue unabated, because in fact it is a quite reasonable question for anyoto ask, "What is it that you do?" and then follow up with "Where is the evidence?" Imagine if private businesses ran school physical education programs. You don't think school administrators and the taxpaying public would expect these commercial groups to prove their effectiveness? In trying to justify physical education we overlook the obvious. We are too quick to grasp onto the latest fads and fashions. Obesity a problem? Physical education to the rescue. Want to improve academic scores? Physical activity will help brain development. Want better people? Give them more character-building team games. Have we all forgotten why WE fell in love with physical education? It wasn't to lose weight, get smarter, or to become leaders. It was because we loved games and sports and physical activities. It's that simple. We loved to move. It made us happy. It connected us with the world, with our brains, and with our developing bodies. There was no final goal. There was no specific outcome. It was the journey that delighted us, and helped us to become healthy, happy, and productive citizens. The process of becoming physically educated was important for our human development. The end. No further justification needed. But how to explain this to others? Ah, that's the question that needs answering. Steve Jefferies, Publisher