Fit Students Equals Happier and Smarter Students

Education should be brought back into grade schools. We need to implement programs that show our youth how to stay healthy and active. Recess and P.E. could be extended a bit more, while ensuring that the kids spent that time being physically active. Promote team sports so that kids are encouraged to stay physically active after school. Creating a national standardized testing would also to ensure students are learning and improving. Studies have shown that physically active kids become better learners and improve mental health. Aerobic exercises, including jogging, swimming, cycling, walking, gardening, and dancing, have been proved to reduce anxiety and depression (Ashish et. al). “It pumps up your endorphins; physical activity helps bump up the production of your brain's feel-good neurotransmitters, called endorphins” (Mayo Clinic). So why not put an emphasis on physical education if it improves the overall well-being of students. Do we not want our students to improve their physical and mental capabilities?

Overweight and obese children and adolescents are a national health concern. According to info posted by the CDC, “The prevalence of obesity was 18.5% and affected about 13.7 million children and adolescents”, for ages 2-19. This is a result due to long periods of inactivity during school. Schools have been taking out Physical Education (P.E.) and health classes out of the curriculum or making them optional. This begins with states and school districts policies and physical education standards. In an article written in The Dallas Morning News, called PE Struggles to Keep Up in Texas Classrooms, it states “The state has dropped Texas Fitness Now, a grant program that promoted exercise and nutrition in poorer middle schools. It has also reduced its high school PE requirement to one credit and made health an elective. Texas requires fitness testing in schools, but districts don’t have to do much with the data. No core curriculum exists”. Throughout my childhood and teenage years my mother moved me and my siblings around often, so I got to experience the various policies and lack of policies in many different schools from elementary all the way up to high school. I was a very active and competitive kid growing up despite the changes in policies between different schools and their opposing policies. P.E. in various schools changed drastically, from being close to a boot camp style of training to just walk around the track for an hour. In certain schools there was physical fitness exams, and others that you were graded based on attendance.

In the article by Harvard School of Public Health I previously used, they state “Children require at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day”. While according to Texas Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, Texas students grades “K-6 – 30 minutes MVPA (moderate to vigorous physical activity) daily or 135 minutes per week or 225 minutes per two weeks if in block schedule”, “grades 6-8 – 30 minutes MVPA daily for at least 4 semesters during these grades as part of district’s physical education curriculum”, and “grades 9-12 – 1 credit (2 semesters) of physical education”. It seems as if the students in Texas are not receiving the recommended amount of physical activity. The only way to fix this is to create a higher standard that is to ensure that our students are given recommended amount time of physical exercise a day. Let us not undermine the importance of physical activity and how essential it is to the growth of our future, because that is was our students are, our future. If we want to aid in reducing the obesity and mental health crisis, let us lead the way by attacking it the source, right at school, where children spend a vast amount of the time growing up.

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Melissa Mitchell wrote an article on three professors at the University of Illinois that conducted a study that explored the cognitive benefits of physical activity. One of the professors, Darla Castelli said “We have a found a strong relationship between academic achievement and fitness scores”. They found these results by testing about 500 students from 3rd to 5th grade. They measured their cardiovascular, flexibility and muscular endurance, using a field assessment tool called the ‘Fitnessgram'. Then they studied the student’s cognitive functions by analyzing score on the Illinois Standard Achievement Test, as well as by observation and measurement of the neuroelectric and behavioral responses to stimulus discrimination tasks. In these studies, they found that fit children found more ways to identify stimuli and process it faster than sedentary children.

So, it has been established that physically fit children perform better academically, but it doesn’t just stop there, studies have proven exercise improves mental health like reducing stress and depression, by the release of those ‘feel good’ chemicals called endorphins, dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. When children are less stressed and depressed it takes away their concentration on the negative feelings they are experiencing and allows them to excel in their academics and boost their confidence in themselves. With an increase amount of mental health cases of anxiety and depression in children, wouldn’t we want to help them by providing them with a healthier alternative to prescription drugs. Harvard Health Publishing released a letter on the effectiveness of exercise compared to prescription drugs. In the letter Dr. Miller explains 'In people who are depressed, neuroscientists have noticed that the hippocampus in the brain—the region that helps regulate mood—is smaller. Exercise supports nerve cell growth in the hippocampus, improving nerve cell connections, which helps relieve depression.

Now that I have discussed the negative consequences of the shortcoming of the P.E. requirements, now I will present you possible resolutions. There is an immense amount of options to keep our youth active for the recommended 60 minutes a day. It is essential to stretch properly, whether it be conventional stretching, yoga, or tai chi, they are all good starts to any physical activity. Proper stretching should take approximately 10-15 minutes. Then you can give a 5-minute block of instruction of the activity that is going to take place, that leaves you with 40 minutes left for the actual activity. Team sports are a great way to provide interaction with one another, also to allow them to practice social skills like communication, teamwork, following instructions, and improve confidence levels, all while getting their hearts pumping. To ensure full participation, keep the class sizes at the state requirement of 22 pupils, that way there is better chance of no kid being left out. For approximately 30-35 you can carry out more than just team sports, you can also teach them exercises they can utilize for the rest of their lives. They can learn different forms and styles of fitness. According to guidelines put out by the CDC, school-aged children “Children and adolescents ages 6 through 17 years should do 60 minutes (1 hour) or more of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity daily”, and this being for aerobic, muscle strengthening, and bone strengthening, and all for 3 days a week. So now you can alternate activities throughout the week.

References

1. “Childhood Obesity Facts” Center for Disease Control and Prevention, page last reviewed June 24, 2019, https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html Accessed Sept 27, 2019.
2. Ashish, Sharma, Petty, “Exercise for Mental Health”, Primary Care Companion for the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, vol. 8 no. 2. 2006, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470658/ Accessed Oct 02, 2019.
3. Exercise and stress: Get moving to manage stress, Mayo Clinic, March 08, 2018 https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/exercise-and-stress/art-20044469 Accessed Oct 02, 2019.
4. Exercise is an all-natural treatment to fight depression, Harvard Health Publishing, Updated April 30, 2018 https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/exercise-is-an-all-natural-treatment-to-fight-depression Accessed Oct 03, 2019.
5. PE Struggles to Keep Up in Texas Classrooms, The Dallas Morning News, February 19, 2012 https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2012/02/20/pe-struggles-to-keep-up-in-texas-classrooms/ Accessed Sept 28, 2019.
6. Physical Activity Guidelines for School-Aged Children and Adolescents, CDC Healthy Schools, https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/physicalactivity/guidelines.htm Accessed Oct 03, 2019.
7. Melissa Mitchell, Physically fit children appear to do better in classroom, researchers say, Illinois New Bureau Oct 18, 2004 https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/207471 Accessed Oct 02, 2019.
8. School Obesity Prevention Recommendation: Complete List, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html Accessed Sept 27, 2019.