By Antoinette Grajeda

Children are taught reading, writing and arithmetic and a variety of other subjects in school. PE4life is making sure students also learn the value of being active and healthy. PE4life is a national nonprofit advocacy organization created in 2000 with the mission “to develop a country of active, healthy children and youth by increasing access to quality physical education solutions,” according to the group’s Web site.

Northwest Arkansas is now home to PE4life’s first regional office, which is funded through grants as well as corporate and private donations and located inside the Rogers Athletic Center. The organization’s programs are already being implemented at schools in Springdale, Bentonville and Rogers. The schools will serve as models so these programs can be replicated throughout Northwest Arkansas and the state, community outreach manager Sherry Lloyd said. Lloyd became involved in the local academy because she thought it was “a great way to influence children.”
PE4life’s approach to physical education is it “be offered to every child everyday, be available to all students, not just the athletically inclined, provide a wide variety of sports and fitness activities to promote an active and healthy lifestyle, assess students on their personal progress toward fitness and physical activity goals, incorporate technology on a regular basis, and extend beyond the walls of the gymnasium,” according to the organization’s Web site.

One of the programs the organization offers is exergaming, or the use of technology for fitness. Another option is outdoor adventure where children learn about camping, bicycling, fishing and kayaking. Students are also taught practical applications along the way. For example, when learning about bicycling, children may also learn how to change a bike’s tire or replace a chain. Outdoor activities also create another activity students can do with their families, Lloyd added.

One of the cirriculums PE4life endorses for its elementary physical education is Action Based Learning, a program that focuses on how to incorporate being active into academics.
“I work with teachers, telling them about how the brain works and grows and remembers and develops, and then the strategies that they can use in the classroom to get movement into their teaching — teaching academic concepts kinesthetically,” ABL co-founder Jean Blaydes Madigan said.

Madigan has 30 years of experience as a physical education teacher, but is now a consultant. When she first heard about PE4life, she was excited about the opportunity to work with an organization who had goals similar to her own.
“I considered them like the knight in shining armor riding in on the white horse and they’re going to save my profession because it was a group of business people who were actually saying they were going to give money towards the effort and then also to lobby in Washington on Capitol Hill for daily physical education, which has always been my dream because of the importance of physical education,” she said.

While discussing the importance of being healthy, Madigan cited a study released in part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, which discovered that one out of five 4-year-olds is obese. When researchers tested the children’s IQs, they also found that their scores were 10 to 20 points lower than their peers.
“What that means is the brain is not getting the fuel that it needs because the high fat, high sugar diet impedes the ability of the brain to get its fuel, which is glucose and oxygen,” Madigan said.

When it comes to improving children’s health, Madigan said it’s important to remember “the good N.E.W.S.” — nutrition, exercise, water and sleep.
“If we can get the parents to do that and work together as a community to help our kids, that’s what it’s all about,” she said.

Schools teaching the PE4life program often track data and so far, their statistics have shown an improvement in students’ fitness scores and decreased disciplinary incidents. There has also been improvements in students’ academics. For example, at Naperville Central High School in Illinois, a new Learning Readiness PE class was implemented for the 2005-06 school year. This program found a link between physical education and improved math and literacy scores when physical activity was offered before reading and math classes. Students who enrolled in a PE class immediately before their math class increased their algebra readiness by an average of 20 percent, according to the organization’s Web site.

Naperville, Ill., was the location of PE4life’s first academy and some argued the program was successful because the school had the proper funding. To test that theory, the organization started an academy in a poorer school district in Grundy Center, Iowa.
“What we wanted people to see is this is not a cookie cutter program,” Lloyd said.
The program was a success there as well and now PE4life has six academies across the United States. Interested teachers, coaches and community leaders can attend these academies to learn more about the program and take the lessons home to their communities.

In June of this year, Bentonville hosted a summit, which attracted more than 200 participants from California, New York, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri and Oklahoma.

After attending a conference, some people become discouraged when they return home because they “hit a brick wall when they get back because of funding,” Lloyd said. The community outreach manager is adamant that participants should not be disheartened.
“If you have to do it on a shoe string budget, it can be done,” she said.

One of the ways Lloyd’s office can help is by assisting interested parties in their search for funding and by offering a grant writing class. The local office also offers public speaking and in the fall, the academy will host training sessions.
Information: 479-621-8878 or www.pe4life.org.