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Mary Richards reportingA lack of funding now means many non P.E teachers have to teach P.E activities to their students. One program hopes to help make P.E. easy but exciting for classroom teachers.
Several Murray School District elementary school teachers laugh as they try to play tag and bounce a ball at a cone. "I hope that enthusiasm carries over into their schools and classes classroom," says Nick Smith, Research Director for the EarlySport Foundation. "Our ambition is to make this the type of program where a teacher has a minimum of preparation time in addition to the load they are already carrying, but in the same time make it doable for a non-specialist teacher," said Smith.
EarlySport is in the Jordan and now Murray School Districts. Fifth grade teachers here say they like what they see so far.
"Previous PE was things you did in elementary school and now we are trying to get it to be more lifelong activities."
Another teacher agrees: "We didn't get a PE specialist but we still have the ½ hour once a week" to fill with activities.
They say whenever there is a lack of funding, the PE specialist is one of the firsts to go, so they have to do their part to combat the growing kids' obesity crisis.
