Obese teachers create sedentary students

I just got back from the National Convention for the National Association for Education of Young Children, held in Chicago. It was an awesome experience – 17,000 creative people who care about the future of our kids. I presented a session entitled, “Physical Literacy – Building Smart, Healthy Kids” and I had an incredibly positive response to this new message. You see, the answer to our problem of inactivity in kids isn’t “exercise”. Exercise is an outgrowth of physical literacy the way that reading is an outgrowth of academic literacy. We need to tackle the core of our inactivity problem, which is teaching kids the skills they need to be physically active – things like motor skills, coordination, agility, balance, spatial awareness, etc. Learning a comprehensive set of physical skills won’t happen by accident, any more than academic learning happens by accident. It needs to be planned and purposeful. Our national education motto is “no child left behind”, but we are leaving children behind in physical development every day! How sad that the bodies they live in will become a burden instead of a joy. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. We can do something to change it – we’re not helpless, and we need to do something besides just wringing our hands over the obesity epidemic in kids.

One thing I became very concerned about at the national conference, was the number of obese people teaching our young children. I was absolutely shocked at the percentage of overweight and obese people walking by our Gymtrix booth (Gymtrix is a DVD series designed to teach young children physical literacy skills). For the most part, the overweight and obese teachers walked passively by our Gymtrix booth, uninterested in a tool to teach physical skills to kids. But, we had many “fit” teachers who stopped, very excited about finally having a way to teach their students to be physically active. These teachers knew the joy and benefit of physical activity in their own lives and wanted to learn how to share it with their students.

Now, if an overweight or obese teacher has no physical activity in their own life, how can they be effective as a role model and educator to teach young children the importance of an active lifestyle? Would we expect academically illiterate people to teach our children to read? The answer is obvious. Yet, we are leaving our children behind physically, and then whining because they are couch potatoes and overweight. HELLO! Wake up everybody! Choose your preschool and day care carefully. The National Association for Sport and Physical Education has recently released national physical activity standards for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. In a recent study, NONE of the preschools and daycares studied met the minimum standards for physical activity!   Studies now show that one in five preschool children are already obese. This is a call to action and an appeal to educators, parents and administrators. Please quit talking about the problem and do something about it!!!

The years from birth to age 5 is a powerful window of time that will shape the abilities and habits of children for their lifetime. This is the time to set the stage for an active life by teaching kids the skills they will need to be active. Exercises for kids like flapping arms and legs to music and jumping up and down might burn some calories but it is not true education.How will kids learn to throw, catch, kick, leap, etc. unless we teach them? We can’t wait until kids are in school – we’ve lost precious time by then. And, schools are cutting physical education in favor of more academic curriculum. The irony is, motor learning develops the parts of the brain needed for academic learning. So, physical learning should be part of the curriculum of every school, for every age, because it prepares the brain for academic learning. And, it should be presented at intervals throughout the day to boost brain power, focus, and attention. What are you doing to fight obesity and give children the gift of physical literacy? Please, do it for the kids!