Kids' After-School Exercise Clubs Seek To Fight Obesity
By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 17, 2005
Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" pounded in the gymnasium. People scrambled up the climbing wall, pumped barbells and strained for a few more crunches on exercise balls. Orange slices and bottles of chilled spring water went fast.
But this was no upscale health club. It was Kangaroo Boot Camp at Fairfax County's Keene Mill Elementary School. (The kangaroo is the school mascot.)
After an hour-long session of jogging, skipping, jumping jacks and leg lifts, physical education teacher Stan Bragg dropped his whistle and gave 200 kids and parents a chance to catch their breath.
"We feel it's really important that kids learn about lifetime fitness," Bragg told the flushed and sweaty crowd. "And we think it's really important that you parents get out and work out with them."
Bragg has plenty of company in his concern over helping children get fit. Many schools in the area, and across the country, are combating the trend toward child obesity by extending physical education beyond gym classes.
Walking, running and jump-rope clubs are popping up, even for the youngest children, before and after school. Students are wearing pedometers and learning to calculate their heart rates. And fitness gear designed to help kids improve upper body strength and agility are complementing slides and swings on school playgrounds.
Educators are responding in part to the federal government's demand, for the first time, that virtually every school system in the nation create a "local wellness policy" aimed at getting kids to exercise more and eat more nutritious food. The plan, required of all schools where lunchrooms get federal money, must be in place by the start of the next school year.
The law allows each system to develop its own plan, based on the needs of its students and the facilities and resources available.
"The law doesn't prescribe what needs to be involved in the policy, but it does prescribe who will be involved," said Kate Coler, deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the school lunch program. She added that the law will force "all school districts to have a dialogue." It doesn't impose penalties on schools that fail to develop a wellness policy, but the USDA is compiling resources to help systems do so.
Tish Howard, principal at Washington Mill Elementary School in the Alexandria section of Fairfax, saw the need for a fitness makeover in her school even before the federal requirement. Toward the end of the 2003-04 school year, teachers were complaining to her that they couldn't fit exercise time into the school day and that many students were piling on pounds.
"I really started looking . . . and it was just glaring to me. I had some girls that were bigger than women I knew," Howard said. "When you watch kids in PE and they're in third grade and they're panting, you know they're not making good choices."
The picture Howard saw is mirrored in classrooms nationwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 16 percent of children ages 6 to 11 were overweight in 2002, up from 7 percent in 1980. For older youths, ages 12 to 19, the percentage who are overweight tripled between 1980 and 2002, to 16 percent. With the extra pounds come an increased risk of such health problems as diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
Last year, Howard, who works out three times a week, bought pedometers for each teacher and arranged to have a yoga instructor hold classes for them at the school. For students, she encouraged after-school clubs devoted to Frisbee, golf, softball, basketball and running, along with the standard gardening and chess groups.
She rewards students who have a good day or are especially kind to a classmate by taking them along on her Friday afternoon walks. And the proceeds of the annual PTA gift-wrap sale went toward we could think of to get students active," Howard said.
The approach seems to be paying off. Wednesday, about 100 students participated in the running club. And Howard's staff of 65 has lost a total of 500 pounds since the start of last school year.
Those sorts of organized and supervised programs are welcomed by parents who often worry that their children aren't active enough but hesitate to let them run free in their neighborhoods.
Lori Maple of Germantown said her two daughters aren't permitted to stray from the cul-de-sac where they live because she worries about their safety. Most days, when Sara, 9, and Danielle, 6, get home from Spark Matsunaga Elementary School, "the first thing they want to do is veg," Maple said. "It's, 'It's too hot out' or 'It's too cold out' or 'It's raining.' They plop on the couch and turn on the TV."
So Maple has been thrilled that the girls started after-school training with Cindy Lins, a physical education teacher who is preparing about 200 students for the Nov. 6 Darcars Young Run in Rockville. One day last week, the students ran relay races, stretched on the blacktop and earned a popsicle stick for each quarter-mile jog around the schoolyard.
During a Wednesday after-school session at Matsunaga, Lins cheered every student who rounded the edge of the schoolyard to complete a lap.
"I know you're going to be running in college, I just know it," she told one student.
"How in the world can you be pooped? I don't understand that," she teased when another girl jogged by slowly.
John Mannes, 9, darted around a course of orange cones with his classmates.
"If you don't get a lot of exercise, you just keep getting weaker and weaker," he said. Plus, he added, "it's fun."
His classmate Trevor Angert is a convert as well. If he wasn't training for the Young Run, he said, he'd "probably be resting at home." But he's been learning the benefits of staying active.
"A lot of people are getting a little more big, and they need to start to get out and exercise," Trevor said.
Penny McConnell, director of food and nutrition services for Fairfax schools, said the panel of teachers, administrators and nutrition experts who are developing the system's wellness policy will look at individual schools' programs with an eye to extending them throughout the county. Fairfax also is surveying high school students and parents on their eating and exercise habits.
At Forestville Elementary School in Great Falls, third-grade teacher Anne Collins developed her own wellness policy last year after she got engaged and decided to lose weight.
She began walking each day at recess and invited students to join her. After stepping up her workout routine outside school as well, she has gone from a size 18 to a size 4. And at Forestville, a walking club was born. On Nov. 19, Collins and her students will participate in a 5K run.
During the recent Kangaroo Boot Camp, Daniel Felsen, a lawyer in the District, and his daughter, Sara, skipped and ran and jumped and laughed until they were worn out. The family makes a point of fitting in exercise, but with the demands of work and errands, it's not always easy.
"I need a shower," Daniel Felsen said as they were leaving.
"We both do, Dad," Sara replied.
Sara, 9, takes taekwondo classes and said she likes to play outside. But the school boot camp inspired her to start an exercise plan that includes playing baseball with her father and "chasing my brothers around the house like a maniac."
"If we didn't exercise, we would get seriously obese and we'd have to go to the hospital for operations," she said. "We'd be really fat and have a hard time moving around."
Keene Mill is planning another family fitness night in March, and the Felsens say they'll be there.
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