‘This is not a playground’: Group looks to build fitness culture
ROSENBERG — The children climbing and swinging on rather oddlooking equipment — no jungle gyms or teetertotters here — didn’t know they were participating in a cultural experiment. They were just having fun and trying to please the parents and teachers gathered to watch them.
“Remember, this is not a playground,” Jessica Risien, a physical education coach at Bowie Elementary, shouted to her charges. “This is about physical fitness.”
The distinction between playing games and getting fit lies at the heart of a partnership between the nonprofit Project Fit America, which developed the fitness curriculum, and Memorial Hermann Health System’s Community Benefit Corp., which donated the new equipment to Bowie. The program’s leaders hope to motivate kids to strive for fitness with the same zeal that gridiron warriors bring to their quest to win games.
“What’s different about fitness and sports is you don’t need to be physically gifted to be really good at fitness,” says Stacey Cook, Project Fit America’s executive director.
The mission of this collaboration is urgent. Childhood obesity rates have tripled since 1980, with an estimated 6 million American children now overweight. Doctors are seeing more children with illnesses such as sleep apnea and Type 2 diabetes.
“Kids today are a lot less active,” Carol Paret, Memorial-Hermann’s senior vice president and chief community health officer, told me after a launch event Wednesday for the fitness initiative at Bowie. “There’s a lot more TV and screen time. If we can catch them early and get them into physical fitness as a lifestyle, we can change those patterns.”
The fitness program at Bowie is Memorial
Hermann’s first in a suburban district; it has worked with Project Fit America at two Houston school district campuses. Fitness is part of a broader Memorial Hermann initiative that includes campus health clinics and mobile dental vans in five school districts as well as coordination with the Houston Food Bank on food insecurity issues.
‘They see it as fun’
Bowie is among more than 1,000 campuses across the country where Project Fit America has established programs. The equipment it uses was designed to “address all those areas where kids fail,” Cook says. These deficiencies include upper and lower body strength, abdominal strength, cardiovascular performance and flexibility.
Some of the equipment resembles apparatuses used by gymnasts — parallel bars, for example, and a vault bar. At Wednesday’s kickoff event, kids demonstrated a pole climb, the parallel bars and a horizontal ladder with one end higher than the other, bringing gravity into play.
The strategy is to encourage kids to do the best they can, then to gradually increase their speed or number of repetitions, Cook says.
“They see it as fun, but the teacher knows they’re getting an incredible workout,” she says.
When I was a kid, it was all about sports. At least for boys in Texas public schools, participation in organized athletics was the dominant social currency. Football reigned supreme, of course, but basketball, baseball and track also were tickets to the cool-kids club. The debate team? Not so much.
Cook has nothing against sports, but she believes her organization’s approach can create a school culture where progress toward fitness goals can bring the same kinds of social rewards as being the starting quarterback.
To some extent, this means cooperation rather than competition. Cook offers this example: Imagine two boys running around a track. One finishes quickly while the other struggles to reach the finish line. Instead of taking a victory lap, the first kid jogs back and runs alongside his classmate, offering support and encouragement.
Benefits beyond health
That may sound like a fantasy, but Cook says it can work in a school with the right leaders: “You have to have a fitness-forward PE teacher, a principal who doesn’t yank kids out of PE for tutoring or cancel recess as a form of punishment.”
The benefits can extend beyond health. Physically fit children think better, score higher on tests, are more confident and cheerful, and sleep more soundly.
Peer pressure is a powerful motivational force for children. It’s nice to imagine that the kids at Bowie Elementary, and others around the country, could get the same props from their classmates for climbing a pole as they would for scoring a touchdown.