Top: Preschoolers work the parachute during Donald hawkins’ s physical education class. Bottom left: hawkins’s class includes dancing in the designated dance area. Bottom right: students use roller boards to scoot across the floor.
place in all of the city’s schools before the federal grant expires in 2012. School officials said the system’s
food services program also has under- gone major changes, which brings it in line with the Healthy Schools Act. But the food program did not receive ad- ditional funding. According to Tony Tata, chief operating officer of D.C. pub- lic schools, many programs outlined in the act, including serving breakfast in the classrooms, were in place or in the works when the act was passed. Jeffrey Mills, the new director of food services for D.C. public schools, has introduced several pilot programs focused on add- ing fresher ingredients to cafeteria food and providing more healthful, portable food for classrooms without direct ac- cess to cafeteria facilities. Mills and Tata are confident that
when these new programs are fully in place later this year, the District will have a model lunch program. The federal grant is an instrumental
ners of the games are not important.” The D.C. school system also used
the grant to purchase Fitnessgram, an assessment program that measures personal fitness for students in grades four and up. With it, students are tested on cardiovascular endurance, flexibil- ity, muscular strength and endurance, and body mass. The data are collected centrally and used to analyze individu- al grades and geographic areas, such as wards, to see what additional resources may be needed. Another program, called HOPSports
(HOPS), a video-driven workout series, will be expanded through the feder-
al grant to the District’s public high schools. The program is already in place in some of the District’s middle schools through funding provided by the Wash- ington Redskins and the United Way. The HOPS curriculum, featuring such activities as Pilates and yoga, is par- ticularly useful in schools that have limited space, school officials said. It also can be integrated into other physi- cal education programs. Hawkins, for example, said he designed a curriculum that uses aspects of SPARK and HOPS simultaneously. D.C. school administrators said they expect to have all three programs in
force in the major renovation of phys- ical education programs nationwide. The movement toward personal fitness in PE has occurred slowly over the past two decades, Holaday said. But the fed- eral grant is dramatically changing the way these classes are taught. “There’s been a total 360 in the way
class is conducted,” she said. Jones, the school official in Loud-
oun, credited the grant with helping to create a “culture and language of health and fitness,” which she said will remain with the students as they ad- vance through the grades and after they graduate.
Daniele Seiss is a member of the Magazine staff. She can be reached at
seissd@washpost.com.
august 8, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine 25
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