Word: pe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...some cases, parents themselves resist. A NASPE survey earlier this year found that parents overwhelmingly support PE. But other studies have found that the parents of overweight kids tend to deny the problem. Chambers recalls her excitement at successfully motivating a young overweight girl to establish an exercise regimen in her home--only to get an angry call from the girl's panicky, obese mother saying, "'Her face is red, and that's not good for her. We're all big, and we're going to stay that...
Advocates say one of the most difficult hurdles is changing people's perceptions. Mary Lou Cowlishaw, an Illinois state legislator who has worked on education issues for 18 years, admits that before meeting Naperville's Lawler, she was not as zealous a PE advocate. "PE the way it used to be probably should be abolished," she says. "The last person you wanted to be was the last one picked for a team, and I was always chosen last." Now Cowlishaw is Lawler's "biggest fan" and the sponsor of a proposal to the state board of education...
...PE spreads, more are sharing that view. Tim McCord, a once traditional PE teacher from rural Titusville, Penn., runs a two-year-old program based on Lawler's model--and on a budget of just $1,000 a year. Setting a much needed national example, the decidedly working-class district upped the PE requirement for high schoolers to a daily 42 minutes starting next year. The CDC's Wechsler advises school boards to re-evaluate their priorities. "You might argue that you can skip algebra and do O.K.," he says. "But learning about how to stay healthy could save your...
Some kids need more than a good PE program. Bernadette Williams and her son Wayne Wilson, an overweight, Boston-area fifth-grader, both credit a leading pediatric obesity clinic--which offered focused personal attention on medical, nutritional and emotional issues--with turning their lives around. "Before I went, I would never have asked basic questions about how to eat and exercise, for fear of seeming stupid," says Bernadette. "But the program offered us some simple solutions...
...weight. His grades were dropping. His self-esteem was so low he would refuse to take off his shirt in blistering heat for fear of "repelling" family members. And since the mocking increased when he exerted himself--biking in the neighborhood, say, or trying to climb a rope in PE--he was spending most of his free time indoors...