The value of Physical Education to student wellbeing

As well as being a strong advocate for the value of the Performing Arts in contributing to student wellbeing I have long been an advocate of Physical Education as a major contributor to student wellbeing.

I am inspired to write this post by an article in my local newspaper [O'Leary, Cathy, "Wait to lose weight gets longer for kids", The West Australian, 10 July 2017, p7].  Following are two key quotes from this article:

"Overweight children are going on waiting lists to join a government -funded program that helps them shed weight, get fit and eat more vegetables."

"....most children who took part changed their body shape and reduced their waistlines, resulting in them not only being healthier and fitter but also gaining in self confidence."

This is a Western Australian state government Health Department program.  It is not about dieting and involves the whole family.

What now follows is an extract from a small book I am writing on School Effectiveness.  It is my Criterion #2 of School Effectiveness.   Tom is the narrator and SDP refers to a School Development Plan the elements of which have embedded within them my School Effectiveness Criteria.  The Leopards are that set of students within the normal school stream that struggle within an academic year to complete the learning for the year level commensurate with their age cohort as prescribed in the curriculum being used (My book is based on the Australian National Curriculum [ANC] )  If there are readers of my blog from the USA read primary/elementary school and secondary/high school.

****************

Criterion #2  My School Helps Me To Be Fit And Healthy And To Feel Good

                           About Myself (Aligns with SDP element #10)

Tom was convinced that what the school did in nurturing the physical and social growth of its students was vital.   The curriculum learning areas of physical and health education and the performing arts provided considerable opportunities to achieve such nurturing.  This is not to decry the value of the arts of drawing and design but Tom believed these to be more specialised and dependent in the areas of painting and drawing on innate talent.  He had taken some criticism over the years for this view and felt somewhat hypocritical when he admired a painting or a sculpture.

Tom had observed during his time working in schools the swelling of pride and joy of students who had just been part of a school play or performance. He well remembered the primary school that each year put on a major performance for the parents and the wider community and the  large number of students who were involved.  He saw the beaming on their faces when the audience cheered and clapped their performance.  He marvelled at the annual School Spectacular screened each year by the ABC network and could see the efforts and extensive student involvement numbers within each contributing school.  He knew of Leopards who just blossomed as performers with a great boost to their self esteem.  Here was a curriculum area made for developing a sense in students that they were respected within their school community.

Tom dreamed of a vision in physical and health education whereby innovative physical education teachers established programs based on general physical fitness leading to good health for each student.  He was sure such programs were out there.  He visualised at primary school level daily physical education aimed at improving general fitness taking into account the physical attributes of each student.  As soon as possible in primary school and leading into secondary school, each student would be skilled to participate in regularly measuring and documenting (a mathematics and computer data management opportunity) their height, weight, core, arm and leg strength and aerobic fitness.  They would be shown how to calculate the optimum weight for height for themselves.  All of this was to be handled very carefully so as not to embarrass anyone.  The fitness programs would be interesting and varied and take into account the sort of impact exercises that might be suited to girls as a hedge against the later scourge of osteoporosis.

The personal fitness data bases designed to be built up over the student’s whole school life were to be secure and known only to the teacher(s) and the individual student.  At secondary school level this whole program could become very sophisticated and extend to developing attitudes of preventative measures/medicine to ensure good health rather than the reach for a tablet approach.

Part of the learning was about a healthy diet.  A caution was the area of obesity and how to assist such students without creating conflict with the family.  An ideal would be to involve the family if this were possible.  All parents would be briefed through various school communication channels about this program. The sensitive area of the school’s dietary recommendations would need to be handled with care so as not to offend families.   Tom knew that some schools would not go for this but he was stubborn in his resolve.  He did not want parents to be told what to do but wanted to be up front about how the school’s Physical and Health Education program dealt with dietary issues and physical good health.  Tom knew that there was nothing new in schools teaching about a healthy diet.  The five food groups had received a regular hammering over the years and parents were used to this occurring. This program was also to embrace the issues of body abuse such as drugs of all sorts.

It would also cover sex education according to the developmental needs of the students and facets about relating to other persons at a sexual level.  Built in here would be warnings about being trapped into abusive situations, especially the dangers that lurked on the internet.  At its very best it could also include education on gender matters such as homosexuality.  Overall the program was to be about developing a positive self- image in each student by giving them the chance to explore these matters openly and positively.  There would need to be a seeking of parental permission in respect of many of the areas that might be covered.

The health and fitness program coordinators would also be responsible for ascertaining the level of bullying across the student population and for developing programs to counter this negative activity.  The physical education staff would have an added responsibility to educate the rest of the staff so that they could support the bullying counter measures.

Thus for Tom a measure of the effectiveness of any school was to create and measure the success of such self-image developing programs.  It was a big responsibility for the physical education teachers.  They might need to coopt other relevant staff members such as the counselling staff.  Of course the physical education staff would have responsibility for sport and student participation in such could be part of their data gathering as to how this assists them as developing individuals. Above all there would be no students fearing that their slowness or their general physical prowess would see them floundering at the tail of the field in any sporting event. It would be about personal fitness goals.

Above all it was to create an environment where the young felt safe and cared for as they learned more in their journey towards being able to look after themselves as adults who had a positive self-image and sense of who they were.  This meant that the young had a sense each day that all was well emotionally and physically and that they had some control over this. Tom knew that part of feeling comfortable at school had to do with performances of various sorts from academic to physical and artistic, but more about that later.

Tom had observed effective teachers over the years making sure they interacted positively with each student each week.  Of particular concern to a teacher were the quiet students.  Some Leopards often worked hard at being inconspicuous because they found the learning tough going.  They may even have experienced what they perceived as a snub in the hurly burly of the classroom.  Tom well remembered a year 12 Leopard telling him how way back in year 4 he asked a question and received what he perceived as ridicule from some of his classmates.  This compounded his dwindling confidence in his ability to learn and he told Tom that from that day he had deliberately remained as quiet as he could and that he never asked another question. As a precaution Tom included in his thinking the next criterion of an effective school.

**************

It will be obvious to any reader of this blog why I was excited to read the newspaper article of 10 July 2017.

Primary/elementary schools may not have specialist physical education teachers and there would need to be a team staff effort to achieve some of what Tom advocated.

Tom's plan and that of the WA Health Department is about good health, positive self image and also preventative medicine that will save billions in health care costs over a decade.

I have always been one to defend schools from being the answer to a plethora of the community's issues but do not resile from this emphasis on the role of Physical Education as advocated by Tom.

Tom may seem to have been a bit soft about competitive sport but this is not the case.  For Tom it is very important but is not to be the main focus of Physical Education. Tom as an Australian educator knows full well what a sport orientated society we have in Australia.

May the Force be with hard working school principals as they build student wellbeing!

GD

The value of Performing Arts to student wellbeing

I have long been an advocate of Performing Arts as a means of developing a positive self concept in children.  As a school Principal and later a Superintendent of Schools (now retired) I saw many examples of students in performance and noted the swelling with pride as their performances were applauded by the audience, usually their families.

This week I was privileged to see on TV a small Australian school funded by an anonymous donor to put on a stage show involving the young primary/elementary students.  The school could not have afforded to do this without the generous donation.  To see the children's faces as they performed and commented on what it meant to them reinforced my faith in the value of the Performing Arts to student wellbeing.


May the Force be with you as you inspire with your leadership!


GD

Who is responsible for the wellbeing of the students in your school?

Wellbeing is a real contemporary catchword in school communities across Australia.  Normally I am suspicious of fads but student wellbeing does not fall into this category.

As an ex school Principal there is no doubt in my mind that the Principal must regularly sight all the indicators of student wellbeing for their school.  In large well resourced schools it may be possible to have a Head of Student Wellbeing who reports directly to the Principal.  Some schools are developing wellbeing centres, for example my youngest grand daughter's school, which has the resources to do such a thing.  Students will be given opportunities to be in touch with how they feel and to practise activities like meditation and other such calming activities.  I guess students will learn to talk things through getting their issues out in the open in a non threatening environment.

I discussed the Wellbeing Centre with one of the teachers from my grand daughter's school putting to him the view that student wellbeing begins in the classroom and is a prime responsibility for every teacher.  I expressed a small skepticism about having a Centre.  He was somewhat in two minds about the cost of providing the Centre vis a vis my view on the responsibility of each classroom teacher.  Time will tell.

Student wellbeing is in my view the number 1 criterion of an effective school.  It needs to be regularly measured by asking relevant questions of students and teachers.  Key wellbeing indicators need to be established that contribute to a rating of the extent of how students are feeling about their security; the extent to which they are respected by those with whom they have contact within the school environment; their physical attributes and their school performance.  While tapping into their sense of security it may be that some data could emerge about their sense of security at home and in the general community outside school.  The Principal will want a benchmark that tells him/her when all is well with student wellbeing across the school.  The Principal will be looking for courses of action to improve wellbeing if the evidence falls short of the benchmark.

It might seem like a lot of additional work but there are many sources of suitable surveys of student wellbeing out there.  A Principal might also decide to pay for say a PHD student to do the surveying and/or link up with a University School of Education to keep on top of this vital area.

In a school where students feel respected and safe a positive environment for learning will have been created.

A caveat:  I am very suspicious of tell all group therapy sessions having observed this in action in a farming community experiencing severe drought.  I recall reading research on such therapies some years ago and the deleterious effects of such therapy.  I am certain we are now more enlightened on how to manage such discussion : we need to be very careful how we expose young developing minds.

May the Force be with us!


GD

Gonski 2.0 funding in Australia

Principals in the main will be pleased that Gonski 2.0 has now been federally legislated.  The needs- based funding that it provides should allow Principals to apply for funds to create flexible situations like aide support for an autistic child in a main stream classroom, or to pay for a researcher to find alternative learning programs for main stream students who are battling to master the basics to move on to new learning, especially in subjects like mathematics.  The latter is not a matter of being 'behind' and 'catching up' it is more about ensuring that gaps in the learning mastery do not develop.  Some students take longer to master processes and concepts and given best practice teaching should be able to progress at a rate suitable to their learning capacities.

Even prior to Gonski 2.0 I am sure many Principals were already spending part of their one line budgets creating these flexible learning arrangements.

I had to allow myself a small chuckle over the the current Prime Minister almost crowing about Gonski 2.0 being needs-based funding.  Maybe the federal politicians of today's Australia cannot recall or did not know that in the period 1972-1974 the famous Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam commissioned Professor Karmel to carry out an investigation into school education across Australia.  The resulting Karmel report recommended needs-based funding.  Another example of the circularity of educational change that has haunted me all my professional life with its consequential waste of money on ill-conceived change or change that doesn't last.  Enough already with this blast from the past.  May Gonski 2.0 make appropriate learning more available to every Australian school student.



May the Force be with you!



GD

Should autistic children be educated in the main stream classes?

Senator Pauline Hanson an outspoken Australian federal senator thinks not.  Her argument is that these children take up too much of the teachers' time detracting from the education for the bulk of the class members.

I am not a Pauline Hanson fan however we need to note that she clearly wanted the best for these children but with them having special school placement.  Of course she received widespread criticism and rightly so as these children do very well in main stream classrooms provided the teacher has the support of a teacher aide to assist with their special needs.

Obtaining the aide time is not always easy.  As an ex school principal I could not allow one student to disrupt the whole class on a regular basis and create huge tensions for the teacher.  I would move heaven and earth to ensure aide time so that the autistic child could stay in the main stream.

Just this week I had a grandmother of an aspergers lad comment on Ms Hanson's comments and agree with her.  The grandmother indicated that her grandson used to call out very disruptively in class and that the only way he could be kept in the main stream was to have an aide.  Fortunately his parents had the funds to pay for an aide.  The lad in question is now a young man who has university qualifications and has lectured at university level.  He is a very well rounded and adjusted citizen who has done extremely well.

Perhaps Pauline Hanson would be better placed not to comment on matters outside her realm of expertise.  It is not the first time she has done this.  However my anecdote about a real situation allows us to see Ms Hanson's comments in a realistic context.

May the Force of reason be with us!


GD

Phonics in Australian schools

Phonics has made a resurgence across Australian formal primary (elementary) schooling, but still receives bad press in that some consider it a learning experience from the past.  It is one of a number of strategies to enable students to learn to recognise words for reading and writing (spelling).

I am glad to see this resurgence as long as it does not become the dominant way for students to achieve word recognition.  There is a list of sight words that phonics does not assist in recognising so sight recognition is also vital.  Students also pick up on recognising words from the context in which they appear.

If I were back as a school principal of primary (elementary) students I would encourage the professional judgement of my junior school teachers to know how to best employ phonics, but I would require that it be part of the word recognition bag of strategies.

Effective writing generally relies on accurate spelling unless an author is trying something different (....being cute if you will).  Reliance on spell check is okay but I've got to confess I feel concerned at an over reliance on this technological assistance.


May the Force be with all professional educators.


GD

The student wellbeing movement across Australia

For thinking principals student wellbeing has always been a prime focus.  It is fair to say however that student wellbeing is now a contemporary movement across Australian schools.

Schools are motivated to not take student wellbeing for granted as part of effective teaching but set out to survey students regularly to ascertain how they are feeling about school in particular.  I support this sharpened focus and regard student wellbeing as the number one criterion of an effective school.

Bethany Hiatt "Kids face questions about sex and bullies", The West Australian, 6 June 2017, p14) reports that The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) is considering the feasibility of a national survey of students' emotional health.  In my own state of Western Australia (WA) she reports that the WA Education Department indicated that public (state) schools "could select from publicly and commercially available surveys to suit their needs."  She also indicates that New South Wales has an online survey titled Tell Them From Me with a primary (elementary) and secondary (high) school versions.

I urge all my principal colleagues to get really serious about sampling student wellbeing regularly as students who feel safe, respected and even loved at school have a wonderful platform for effective learning of the academic outcomes as prescribed in the curriculum their school follows.  Win over the disillusioned students and those of low motivation about school by showing that you care about every one of them every day.

How many students love coming to your school each day?


May the Force be with you!



GD