We love to share amazing success stories of schools becoming fitness champions and encouraging students to live an active lifestyle. John Taylor is a physical education teacher at Beloved Community Charter School in Jersey City, NJ, and his life’s mission is physical fitness. Here’s his inspiring story of how he brought this mission to life at his school.
Let’s Move! Active Schools allowed our health and safety team to come together, and review our policies regarding physical activity and nutrition. By working as a team to answer the application questions, we collectively created answers, identified deficiencies, and generated action plans to meet the health-related needs of our students. It was really eye opening to hear perceptions from other teachers regarding the effectiveness of our school health initiatives, and compared those perceptions to health screening data we obtained from our nurse and FitnessGram results. After we realized our perceptions didn’t match the data, we know it was time to implement program changes to improve student health.
The end of the year FitnessGram test outcomes were very powerful for our students. We experienced a 35% improvement in the PACER test in grades 3-5 from September 2014 to May 2015. These same grade levels also experienced a 17% improvement in push-ups, and a 22% improvement in curl-ups. By being more physically active and eating healthier food, our students learned first-hand how wellness levels can be improved through making better choices. There were two physical education teachers, one school nurse, the principal, and one after school coordinator involved in this fitness program. I led the efforts to implement the Let’s Move Active Schools programs.
The program has really grown since it was started two years ago. At first, our wellness team performed the online Let’s Move! Active Schools assessment, and didn’t realize how deficient we were in many areas. However, after developing and executing our action plans, we were able to be in compliance with all Let’s Move! Active Schools objectives, thus earning the Let’s Move Active Schools National Recognition Award in 2014.We earned this same award again in 2015, but because we already implemented all of the action plans, we were immediately in compliance with Let’s Move! Active Schools objectives.
The response from students was fantastic. They were very eager to get involved. Many participated in before and after school physical activity programs, and even created their own healthy menus with in their health classes. They gained a great deal of satisfaction when we hung the Let’s Move! Active Schools National Award banners in the gym, because they knew they earned it based on their involvement.
Knowing that we as educators play a pivotal role in helping students learn and develop lifetime physical activity and health eating habits is a tremendous responsibility. But with Let’s Move! Active Schools, we are provided a blueprint for a program we can implement to help students improve their wellness levels, and in turn, lead a healthy and active lifestyle well into their elderly years.
For more Active Schools success stories, visit www.ssww.com/blog/tag/lets-move-active-schools
About Active Schools
Active Schools is a sub-initiative of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign. They announced the 2015 National Award recipients which included 525 U.S. schools, recognized for their efforts of increasing physical activity for their students and creating an Active School environment. They are truly School Champions, making a difference in the world of physical education. S&S Worldwide joined Let’s Move! Active Schools to support their goal that Active Kids Do Better.
Want your school to become an Active School? Join the movement.
About John Taylor
John Taylor received a Master of Science in Sports Studies and his teaching certificate in physical education in 2009. John Taylor then starred on the weight loss reality show Too Fat for 15: Fighting Back as a physical trainer and coach. Since 2012, he has been the physical education teacher at Beloved Community Charter School in Jersey City, NJ, and has served as the Vice President of the state physical educators association, NJAHPERD. Beloved has won numerous awards during his tenure including the NFL Play 60 Touchdown School Award (twice), Let’s Move Active Schools National Recognition Award (twice), and 2014 SPARK Dance National Championship. In 2015, Taylor helped Beloved receive recognition from the Presidential Youth Fitness Program as a success story schools, an honor only given to four schools in the United States. Along with his teaching duties, Taylor runs Beloved’s after school intramural sports programs, the BOKS Kids (Reebok-sponsored) before school physical activity program, and he coaches female students in the Girls on the Run program.
