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Mini-Grant Proposal [Educ 131] Physical Education Breaking new Grounds in High School  5/23/12

Background Information Obesity is an epidemic that is affecting children of all ages. Our group is specifically addressing the issue by stressing the need for physical education in high school students. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity amongst adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19 increased 13% from 1980 to 2008. The excess weight has both immediate and long-term health effects. Immediate effects of obesity include a 70% of obese youth developing a type of cardiovascular disease and it also increases the risk for joint problems. Long-term health effects include a higher risk for different types of cancer, heart diseases, and strokes. In addition, the unhealthy lifestyles due to poor diet and lack of exercise lead to approximately 300,000 deaths every year. This epidemic is not only affecting the individuals gaining the weight, it also affects the society as a whole. American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry states that an estimated $100 billion is the annual cost spent on treating individuals with obesity. In order to tackle this epidemic, prevention is key. Therefore our group is proposing new technology in high schools to stop obesity from developing among children. The two components we will stress are healthy eating and physical activity. We plan to use pedometers, arcade stimulated activities, and online nutritional websites to reach our goal of instilling lifelong healthy habits for high school students to maintain. A general assessment will be given at the beginning and at the end of the school year to test the program’s effectiveness. By tackling obesity through awareness and physical activity, we hope to slowly decrease this widespread epidemic. Pedometers are devices that are typically secured on one’s waist by a clip, some can be strapped around the arms. They are meant to record the number of steps an individual takes. Although, fancier pedometers are able to track the distance one walks and calories burnt they are most likely inaccurate and expensive, according to a PBS article. The article continues on to mention that an ordinary pedometer will do since it is only needed to ensure that we are taking 10,000 steps a day which is the recommended. In addition, Jacalyn Lea Lund, PhD, and Mary Fortman Kirck, PhD notes that pedometers are also great for assessing participation levels, making it an even more attractive reason as to why we would like to distribute 1/3 of our funding to these devices. Often when we think of obesity we think of sedentary activities such as video games being one of the causes behind it. However, by taking these games to another level, that is the physical level we can help students learn how to enjoy physical activities while promoting a healthy lifestyle. Thus, the incorporation of arcade stimulated activities such as kickboxing, nascar/motor cross station, or Dance Dance revolution (DDR) will be necessary to start such a trend. In support, Mr. Weaver, a teacher at Jersey Shore Area Middle School emphasizes how the innovated arcade stations have made nontraditional PE students (students that don’t particularly like PE) more excited about physical fitness. Hence just like physical exercise is the key component to the decrease in obesity, motivation is the key component to exercise. Additionally, raising awareness is also a very important component of obesity prevention. Many high school student become obese because they intake more calories than the amount they burn off in a day. Therefore, to address this problem we propose to have teachers educate their students about healthy lifestyles through an online supertracker. The program allows students to input their daily activities and daily intake, then the site calculates the numbers and tells the student how healthy they are. Based on the result, an individual goal will be set for each student to achieve. The website also gives nutrition facts about all types of foods and makes recommendations on how to live a healthy life. Students can create individual plans, write journals, set goals, view sample meal plans, and more. It is very accessible and has a lot of useful information that can educate students about how to live a healthy lifestyle. All in all, our group proposes to keep aspects of traditional physical education while incorporating new aspects through technology. By using pedometers, arcade stations, and online food/physical trackers, we hope to create an innovative and fun environment for students to play and learn in. We believing tackling obesity through various ways will help us cater to the needs of each student. By focusing on physical activity and healthy eating, we strive to create a program that will inspire high schools to continue long-standing healthy lifestyles even in their later years. Project Description

Physical education is a crucial form of prevention that can fight against the obesity found in children. It does not only give students a chance to exercise daily, it also exposes them to different sport teams while promoting physical fitness. Knowing the importance of physical education as prevention, we propose that in our program, high school students be split into two interchangeable groups; an outdoor and an indoor group. Students in group 1 will be placed indoors for the first half hour of the class and outdoor for the second half. Group 2 follows the same procedure, but begins with the outdoor activities instead of the inside ones. The majority of the grant funding will be distributed towards the indoor activities which includes various arcade stimulated games such as a kickboxing, nascar/motor cross, and DDR, as previously mentioned. In the kickboxing station students will be given the opportunity to increase the flexibility of their arms and leg muscles in addition to their sense of hand-eye-coordination when punching or kicking the lighted areas. Once the students spend a good 15 minutes at the kickboxing station they can then move on towards the nascar/motor cross or DDR station. Both these stations are good for cardio exercises because they require the students to use their leg muscles to either pedal or dance, giving their heart a gradual workout. Such activities expose these students to a completely different construct of physical education that they never in their lives would have imagined to be of benefit to their health. As for the outdoor activities they will include your average physical education involving sports and track and field activities. Since the program is not extensive, we want to vary the sports based on their articulation. For example, rather than having soccer and basketball which are very similar in concept we want to have tennis and basketball or baseball. For three days of the week the students will focus on a sport and two other days, track and field activities during their second half of their class of course. Pedometers will be used throughout this half of the class to keep track of the number of steps students are taking when engaging in these activities.  Since the PBS article mentioned that 10,000 steps per day is the recommendation for living a life of longevity and helps to decrease in risk of diseases we’ll have the students make daily recordings of their steps. Thus, for the duration of our 3 month program we will have the students carry around “mini-notepads.” These notepads will have the recordings of their daily food intake along with their pedometer results and duration/type of exercise. Before bedtime the students will update their profile on __www.choosemyplate.gov’s __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> SuperTracker with the information found in their notepads as their homework. Training will be provided on the very first day of this program about the usage of the SuperTracker. Teachers will ensure by the very end of the program’s first day that each and every child will already have a profile. The first week of the students’ updates will merely be a trial. Students are also expected to come up with 5 reasonable goals by the end of the first week to meet once the program is over. Students will be encouraged by teachers to speak to their virtual coach on choosemyplate.gov when they feel that no further improvements are being made to their health. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Accessibility should not be of an issue since the equipments will be left in the school's gymnasium over the duration of the program. Teachers are also encouraged to be role models and participate in this program with their students, so they too must create a SuperTracker profile. Students who do not have the additional resources such as computers, laptops, or ipads to record their daily information before bedtime are welcome to use the school’s computer. However, students may only utilize this resource before or after the start of the program to record the previous day’s information. This will be highly enforced since we do not want to cause a distraction during the program activities that might defer students from exerting their fullest capacity toward the activities. We strive for them to develop a sense of responsibility and dedication when assigning them to update their profile daily for homework. By developing such responsibility and dedication we can hope to ensure that students will make a habit of living healthily.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman Bold','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Management

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">In order to manage the program we will have three people from our program to monitor the arcade stimulated games so that they will not be misused. The regular physical education instructor will manage the outdoor groups as they normally would during the school year. However prior to beginning the program, the principal will gather the Physical Education instructors/educators for a mandatory meeting. It is up to the principal themselves, of course, if they will opt to choose to implement our program in their schools or not. If the choice is to accept our program then we will conduct it for three months. The principal may choose to stop the program when he or she feels that it is of more harm towards their students than of benefits, we will respectfully oblige to their choices. In general, all students enrolled in Physical Education classes will be a participant to our program and as well as the instructors for each class. Other staff members we hope to involve is the cafeteria staff. We will send in our request for replacing not so healthy choices for healthy choices. Vending machines, for example, will provide fruits rather than junk food. By changing such options we hope students will choose to invest their money in our healthy products rather than bringing junk food from home. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">As for the roles of the faculty, they will be as follows: Track the students’ running times, check student’s pedometers daily to ensure no malfunctioning problems has occurred, and recording the results as it is. They can also help those from our program monitor the arcade stimulated game if they feel like they’d like a change in environment. We then will switch one or two of our program leaders from the indoor activities to monitor students in the outdoor activities. Their main role, as to ours is to keep these students on track and to provide necessary assistance when needed. Overall, staff members are expected to maintain a safe yet educational environment to help instill healthy life long habits even after the program. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">To coincide with building a safe environment, we will provide training for faculty towards the usage of our equipment. Training will extend until all staff members are almost experts in our equipments. We will hire developmental psychologists to help faculty members and our program leaders build a strong sense of communication skills. These communication skills will be highly implemented since the lack of motivation falls into one of the many reasons for obesity.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman Bold','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Evaluation <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> In order to conclude if our technology has made a difference we will base it on naturalistic observations. After the program, when the arcade stimulated games are taken away that is we will continue to watch the students’ SuperTracker profile to see who is still making updates. We will also distribute a survey at the end of the year to see how many are exercising and eating healthy outside of their Physical Education classrooms. Our questions will include such things as inferring on the amount of times students devote to exercising per week or their daily intake of fruits and vegetables. To avoid faulty responses we will personally conduct phone interviews with their parents or guardians to confirm the students’ answers. Finally, we will compile their student reports from the SuperTracker immediately after the end of our program to see if many, some, or very little progress has been made for each individual student. Once we gather all the reports, surveys, and observations after a year and see significant positive changes in the majority of these students’ lives we can infer that our program has some sort of effect. However, to ensure that our program really did make an impact we can have a longitudinal study where we track these students into their freshmen year of college, most known as “Freshmen 15.” Therefore, if by the end of their freshmen year in college and our students are either able to maintain their weight or not gain any at all we can be more credible than before in saying that our program does work to help decrease obesity.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman Bold','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Works Cited <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"Adolescent and School Health." <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman Italic','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 Sept. 2011. Web. 16 May 2012. <http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm>. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"America's Walking: Pedometers." <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman Italic','serif'; font-size: 16px;">PBS <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">. PBS. Web. 19 May 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/americaswalking/gear/gearpedometers.html>. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">LelandT21. "Technology In The PE Classroom (XRKADE)." <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman Italic','serif'; font-size: 16px;">YouTube <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">. YouTube, 13 Sept. 2010. Web. 14 May 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlcqVLlATNw>. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Lund, PhD, Jacalyn Lea, and Mary Fortman Kirk, PhD. "Using Pedometers to Assess Physical Activity Participation Levels." <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman Italic','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Humankinetics <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">. Web. 14 May 2012. <http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/using-pedometers-to-assess-physical-activity-participation-levels>. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"Obesity In Children And Teens." <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman Italic','serif'; font-size: 16px;">American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">. Mar. 2011. Web. 18 May 2012. <http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/obesity_in_children_and_teens>.