Childhood Obesity Spikes, Alabama P.E. Instructors Fight Back

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From Your Health Journal…..”Kudos to the Alabama school systems for taking steps towards teaching children about healthy lifestyle in their physical education classes. PE is such a vital part of the school day, and can have such a positive impact on children’s health. PE teaches children healthy habits that can lead to into adulthood. So many states have limited PE time, but it would be beneficial to have daily, quality PE at schools nationwide.”

From the article…..

Sit-ups, push-ups and v-sits. Things we’ve all done in gym class. But now Alabama schools are taking a new approach to physical fitness to combat childhood obesity.

“It used to be called the President’s Challenge Physical Fitness,” says Cloverdale P.E. teacher Joyce McMillen. And now.

“It’s called the Alabama Fitness Assessment Test,” she added. But there’s more to it than just a name. The program has been completely redesigned to create a more demanding routine, focused on running.

“Running is so important and it gets so many muscles moving and they understand their bodies with the heart beating faster,” explains McMillen.

The mile-run used to be modified but now all students get involved. “Every student 8 years on up must do an entire mile,” says McMillen.

A change that Brittney Grimsley feels is just the right pace. She is among a small group with the fastest mile in the school and she says she owes it all to McMillen.

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