Helping Children Get a Jump Start on Fitness : Education: A program in Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach elementary schools softens the old competitive approach to physical education and stresses teamwork and personal development.

Remember P.E.?

The standard fare was kickball, boys versus girls. The jocks booted it over the fence while the less physically inclined prayed for a fire drill.

That competitive approach to physical education--an emphasis that educators say often instills a permanent dislike of physical activity--has been erased in the Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach elementary school districts, replaced by a fitness program that stresses teamwork and personal development over athletic superiority.

Moving Children: Healthy Children, a program funded by the South Bay Hospital District, helps classroom teachers turn junior couch potatoes into lifelong fitness buffs.

In quarterly workshops and follow-up meetings, teachers learn how to spice up their P.E. programs by using parachutes, earth balls, beanbags and empty bleach bottles to play games like “Octopus Tag,” “Frog in the Pond” and “Catch the Dragon’s Tail.”

The focus on physical education is new to elementary school teachers, according to Moving Children director Kenneth Leach.

Some elementary school districts have physical education specialists, but in most districts classroom teachers are charged with teaching 200 minutes of P.E. every two weeks. The problem, Leach says, is that they don’t know how.

“At most, teachers take an hour course in P.E. (in college) and that’s it,” Leach said.

The result: repetitive games like kickball and “Duck, Duck, Goose.”

“Who suffers? The kids,” Leach said. “It turns them off.”

Results from the 1990 state fitness test for fifth-, seventh- and ninth-graders indicate that something is wrong with physical education programs. More than half of California’s fifth-graders couldn’t match national standards for sit-ups, pull-ups and the one-mile run. Forty percent couldn’t do the standard for pull-ups: one.

Physical fitness experts weren’t surprised by the results.

“We’ve known for years that children were out of shape,” said Clayre Petray, a physical education instructor at Cal State Long Beach who helped develop a model fitness program, Physical Best. Like Moving Children, Physical Best promotes personal achievement and staying healthy for life.

Although some school districts in the state have updated their approach to P.E. based on poor test results, change has been slow and spotty, Petray said.

Notes Leach: “Current programs don’t get kids fit. Only the real athletes are able to rise to the top.”

With poor fitness programs at school and sedentary television and video games at home, Leach said he wonders whether children ever get any exercise.

“We want to turn these kids on to fitness. We want them to feel good about themselves,” he said.

Moving Children, now in its second year at the two districts, attempts to involve all students by offering a kaleidoscope of activities designed to get them into the habit of being physically active.

“Our motto is, ‘If you’re not moving, you’re not getting healthy,’ ” Leach said.

The program does not include testing of specific skills. However, the two fitness specialists who work with the program report that children are more enthusiastic about their P.E. sessions and that during recess many of them spontaneously play the games they learned in P.E.

During a recent P.E. period at Beryl Heights Elementary School in Redondo Beach, Vivian Spiglania’s first-grade class skipped while tossing beanbags, first at an angle, then straight up.

“Which way is the easiest to catch?” Spiglania asked.

“Straight up,” two boys yelled.

During the session, youngsters were learning coordination and object control while exercising their legs, arms and heart. But they never knew they were exercising.

“They just think it’s fun,” Spiglania said.

Unlike most elementary school P.E. programs, Leach said, there is definite methodology to Moving Children. Youngsters are taught sequential age-appropriate skills. At the beginning of the school year, they learn about personal space and the mechanics of how their limbs and muscles function. Next, they study body control, using the large, inflatable earth balls and parachutes.

After mastering those skills, students learn how to use rackets and scoops as extensions of their bodies. Finally, at the end of the year, they study game structure.

Each P.E. period is followed by classroom discussion--”What muscles did we use today?”--and related health topics. Students then log their progress and fitness goals in a journal.

“The idea is to get them to really think about their health. We want them to be proud of their accomplishments,” said Mike O’Brien, one of the fitness specialists assisting teachers in the two districts.

Moving Children is a voluntary program, but about 85% of the Redondo Beach teachers and nearly all of the Hermosa Beach teachers are involved.

Although individual campuses like Ramona Elementary School in Hawthorne and Point Vicente in Rancho Palos Verdes have upgraded their P.E. programs, only one other South Bay elementary school district--Manhattan Beach--has upgraded its physical education program at all grade levels.

Instead of retraining classroom teachers, the Manhattan Beach City School District uses full-time fitness specialists, one at each of the district’s five campuses. They follow a model similar to Moving Children, stressing individual development.

“There are trade-offs,” said Manhattan Beach curriculum director Sara Content. Instrumental music was cut to free funds for the P.E. program. “But, for our community, it was a priority,” she said.

Petray, the Cal State Long Beach instructor, said an increasing number of school districts are changing their approach to P.E., but the pattern is sporadic.

“We don’t know if it’s a trend that’s going to hit everyone or maybe it’s going to stop here,” she said.

Petray said part of the reason that fitness and health get so little attention is that many school officials have unpleasant memories of P.E. from their own school days.

“The average person had a bad experience, especially in junior high. They remember running laps and doing sit-ups,” she said.

Petray said most school officials have never seen a positive physical program.

“If children don’t get hooked on to health and physical fitness by the time they are 8 or 9, studies show they may never change their attitudes,” she said.

Local school administrators acknowledge that their P.E. programs need updating, but they say funds often are not available.

“When curriculum gets crowded and something has to go, that something is usually P.E.,” said Kenneth Blake, assistant superintendent of the Hawthorne School District.

Because Moving Children is funded by a grant from the hospital district, it is not at the mercy of fickle school budgets, Leach said.

“Schools can’t do it all by themselves anymore. They need help from the community,” he said.

However, a partnership between school districts and the community can be uneasy in the beginning, Leach said.

“At first, teachers were skeptical” of Moving Children, he said. “You couldn’t give the program away.”

Now, 92 teachers are using the curriculum.

“The teachers know it’s working. Just look on any of our playgrounds. Kids are moving. They’re getting healthy,” Leach said.

Longtime Redondo Beach sixth-grade teacher Mary Jane Crafton said the new curriculum has changed her attitude about P.E.

“I admit it. I used to have the kids play kickball a lot,” she said, dodging an earth ball during a raucous volleyball game. “But I have to say, with this, more kids get involved. Everyone wants to play.”

A case in point is 11-year-old Trevor Lopez.

“See, with that other kind of P.E., like softball, if you mess up, everyone knows,” he said. “This--it doesn’t matter how well you do. It’s just for fun.”