Reaching Your Number

(This essay was originally published on SHAPE America’s member Exchange [August, 2015] and is reprinted with permission.)

Last month I suggested the best way for us to achieve SHAPE America’s goal of “50 Million Strong by 2029” was for each of us to ask ourselves, “What’s my number?” Instead of letting the immensity of changing the physical activity and health habits of 50 million students overwhelm us, let’s focus on how you personally can contribute. If we all do our part, we will succeed.

Not long ago, Mark Zuckerberg, the young Facebook creator, set about wiring the world — or more specifically, getting every person on the planet connected to the Internet. A 7.325 billion-person challenge! As you can imagine, he had some immense problems to overcome. But he saw it as doable and convinced others to join the enterprise. If interested, you can learn more at internet.org. It’s an interesting project but what I found especially intriguing is the approach being taken. The problems that need to be solved have been clearly identified and strategies are being developed to resolve them. In other words, the way to solve big challenges is through taking small steps and not giving up.

This is exactly how the health and physical education profession can succeed. It’s not only about getting every school-aged student physically active and healthy, but also about earning public respect for what we contribute to public education. But we need evidence! It is not sufficient to talk about the value of health and physical education. We need to prove it. And this is why it is so important for each of us to seize the opportunity that “50 Million Strong by 2029” is offering.

By focusing – almost exclusively – on getting kids physically active and healthy we can prove our value. Now, let me hasten to add that this is different from having people organize physical activity for kids. If we simply wanted to get kids physically active or physically fit it would be easy. We would just need to run them around tracks or on treadmills and restrict their diets. We know this works from laboratory experience with rats. Problem is, given the choice both rats and kids would choose to stop running and return to excessive calorie-dense diets (as most dieters already know).

Obviously, that’s a dead-end approach to getting people active. It simply doesn’t work in the long-term. No, the value of health and physical education is that we have the opportunity (and training) to help our students discover the joy of moving and to connect them with physical activities they’ll choose to do outside of our classes.

For “50 Million Strong by 2029” to succeed, health and physical educators have to think and act differently. It’s not just about what we do with students in class but we must become the school leaders for creating physical activity and health-enhancing experiences before, during and after the school day. It’s a change. It may not be what we signed up for, but it’s what is going to keep us employed. More importantly, rather than simply being self-serving and job-preserving, it’s also the way for us to prepare our students with the physical activity and health habits essential for them to live happy and productive lives.

For example, SHAPE America’s new Back to School website features great resources to help you develop your own comprehensive school physical activity program. The school day has three clear parts: before, during, and after school. If you want to get started on “reaching your number,” simply pick one of these time periods. Choose how you can best invest your time to change the environment to get all of your students more engaged in physical activity. That’s the starting point. It’s that simple.