Congrats to Phil Lawler - Lifetime Achievement Award

Madison Junior High School commemorated its 30th anniversary Monday with a celebration that often focused on the lifetime achievements of Phil Lawler.

Lawler is a member of the original Madison faculty, a retired District 203 physical education coordinator and the director of education and training for PE4life, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of quality, daily physical education programs for all children.

Madison Junior High celebrated its 30th anniversary Monday afternoon by recognizing the lifetime achievements of retired District 203 physical education coordinator Phil Lawler. Here Lawler hugs Executive Director of PE4life Anne Flannery after she spoke in Lawler's honor during the event. Danielle Gardner / Staff photographer

During the ceremony, the school and Naperville School District 203 recognized Lawler as "The Idea Man" and as "An Icon of a Community Contributor."

While teaching at Madison, Lawler pioneered a new approach to physical education instruction. He led District 203 to change the focus of its PE programs from teaching sports skills to getting every child in school physically fit.

This transition began about nine years ago with the surprising lessons he learned from heart monitors. Those lessons led Lawler to a philosophy on teaching PE that stresses constant movement and melds fun and fitness. Lawler's passion for this approach gained great support in the District 203 community, which stepped up to transform PE facilities at Madison and other District 203 schools into what amounted to full-fledged fitness centers.

The PE program at Madison became a model for this new approach, and PE4life, which Lawler began working for once he retired from teaching, has sent thousands of educators from 38 states and 10 countries to Madison to see how District 203 has modernized its gym classes.
Anne Flannery, PE4life's executive director, said the ever-growing interest in this approach to PE all started with Lawler.

"For any of you who don't believe in the power of one, believe in it," she said.
After he received two standing ovations from the jam-packed gymnasium, Lawler, who is currently fighting his fourth round of cancer, stepped to the podium.

Directing his comments to the students who, he noted, weren't attending Madison when he retired three years ago, Lawler stressed that the assembly was about the school, not him.
He pointed out to them that the American flag to which they pledged allegiance actually flew over the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on the birthday of the school's namesake -- President James Madison. He also noted that the school opened late, and did so in part because wind blew down the wall upon which Madison's beloved mural is painted. He noted that the artist who painted it is color blind.

The building itself has seen two additions since it was built, and District 203 split Madison's original construction costs with the state, which installed "an experimental roof" in the building, Lawler said. The roof was supposed to expand and contract in certain types of weather, he noted, and it did.

"We went through two years where you could actually see the sky through the roof of the gymnasium and the cafeteria," Lawler said. "We actually had basketball games called off due to rain."

However, moments before he led the students in a "M-A-D-I-S-O-N" cheer, he reminded them what has mattered most at Madison over the past 30 years.

"I watched this building go up brick by brick," he said," but the reality is that it has always been about the students."

Preventing and Reducing Childhood Obesity < Insert Your State Here>

Pay a little now – or pay a lot later – most states are choosing not to fund quality PE – just look at one state that is now paying more later – think about adding those numbers among all 50 states – hopefully some of the new politicians that win elections next week will address the epidemic of childhood obesity – in a few years – this will be a bigger economic crisis that the present one.

-Phil Lawler PE4Life

http://www.wgy.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=&article=4504831

http://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/health/childhoodobesity.pdf

Brain Rules by Dr John Medina

If you have not had a chance to read Brain Rules by Dr John Medina – take the time to watch this video – by the time you get done watching this video – you will begin to realize how important cardio vascular fitness it to brain function – you probably don’t have time to watch this video, at least watch part of it – a real challenge – try and get a school administrator to watch it……very educational – this video puts PE on the educational map….

Phil Lawler
PE4Life

Video Games That Keep Kids Fit

Gym teachers and video games have never been a happy mix. While one side struggles to pull kids off the couch, the other holds them fast. But Kim Mason, a phys-ed director in Rogers, Ark., with 28 years of experience selling kids on the virtues of sweat, did something unlikely last year: she persuaded her public-school district to invest $35,000 in brand-new video-game equipment.

That would be more surprising if students in Rogers were the only ones plugging into interactive workouts, but they're not. Some 2,000 schools in at least 35 states have begun to set up exergaming fitness centers with motion sensors and touch-sensitive floor mats to allow kids to control the action onscreen not just with their thumbs but also with their bodies. Do enough dancing or kung-fu kicks, and you just might get the same level of exercise as from chasing a soccer ball. What's more, this is a workout kids don't try to duck. "Physical education used to be a joke," says Dr. John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of Spark, an upcoming book about exercise. "That has changed simply because we are catching up with the gamer generation."

Finding a way to help this most sedentary age group is more important than ever. Nearly 17% of U.S. kids are considered overweight or obese, and many more are struggling. Meanwhile, as scale numbers are climbing, school budgets for P.E. are falling. As a result, fewer than 10% of elementary schools meet the National Association for Sport and Physical Education's standard of students spending 150 minutes a week in gym class.

The high-tech answer to the problem came two years ago when West Virginia University studied the health effects of an exergaming system called Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)--interactive games that instruct kids to use their feet to tap buttons on a sensor mat. After a pilot program found the games were beneficial, the state vowed to install consoles in all its public schools by next year. (It didn't hurt the study's credibility that it was funded in part by an insurance company, not by the gamemaker.) Since then, other districts have climbed aboard, helped by video-game makers like Nintendo and Sony, which are designing systems to meet the demand; small companies like Expresso Fitness that donate equipment; and federal grants and private donations that bankroll the purchase of equipment. "The old system is failing kids," says Phil Lawler, director of training and outreach at PE4life, a nonprofit based in Kansas City, Mo., that helps modernize P.E. "We are tricking them into exercising."

A gaming system, which can cost up to $4,000 a pop, is more expensive than, say, a kickball, but the fact is, it may work just as well. In January the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found that obese kids burned six times as many calories playing DDR as they did with a traditional video game. And in July the wonderfully named Alasdair Thin, a researcher of human physiology at Heroit-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, found that college students burned twice as many calories playing an active video game in which they dodged and kicked for 30 minutes as they did walking on a treadmill. Studies have not yet shown how the new games measure up against a real session of, say, soccer or wind sprints.

Of course, since a child told to hustle around a track pretty much has to do it, critics argue that there's no need for video games in gym classes even if they do have some health benefits. But there's a physical difference between an hour of exercise enthusiastically pursued and one that's merely plodded through. And, Lawler says, "most kids aren't volunteering to do pull-ups after school." Develop a taste for aerobic video games, however, and you just might carry the habit home.

But can anything hold the fruit-fly attention span of kids? "Video games are not the answer," says Warren Gendel, founder of Fitwize 4 Kids, a chain of traditional children's gyms. "Kids will get bored and be back on the couch." Maybe, but that won't stop the games from coming. Fisher-Price just began selling a video-game bike for toddlers. No word yet on a version for the prewalking crowd--but don't bet against it.