Welcome to the April edition of pelinks4u:

I write this introduction preparing to depart for the 2011 San Diego National AAHPERD Convention. As I indicated in last month's editorial, it should be a great event. My son has begged me to get Drew Brees' autograph, and given me a football to pack to San Diego. He suggested that I also get Apollo Ohno to sign the same ball but I balked at that. He said it would be unique.

This year's convention has several celebrity guests and presenters and hundreds of professional presentations. I hope the experience was rewarding for those of you who were there and (as I did last year) I urge everyone to try to make at least one national convention soon. It's great to see people whose names you recognize, and you get a chance to meet them. It's also great to watch groups of like-dressed PE majors search out new ideas (as well as free items from the exhibit hall vendors).

I go with a huge sense of excitement because the future of physical education and of the Alliance will be keenly discussed. PE2020 (pe2020.org), in addition to stimulating almost 2000 essays, provided the foundation for the PE2020 Forum that I report on below. And there is sure to be much discussion about plans to reorganize AAHPERD. Change is not easy and is often uncomfortable. But if Darwin was right, those who are the most responsive to change are the ones who survive.

Almost daily, we hear of cuts to physical education programs and positions being eliminated. Problem is, that unless it affects us personally we rarely respond. Martin Niemoller famously alluded to this behavior is his famous "First they came…" statement. Applied to physical education, if we fail to speak out now to create a positive future, eventually there will be no one left to speak out.

We will have more time to report on the National Convention in the May issue, and I'd certainly enjoy hearing from readers about their experience. In the meantime, enjoy this month's eight articles. And do remember that if you feel strongly about something or have an idea that others might enjoy learning about, send us an email.

ARTICLE INTRODUCTIONS:

THE FUTURE OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION: WE MUST CHANGE NOW!
This year's PE2020 Forum represents a significant event in our professional history. However, many before us have also pondered our future. Many years ago Chuck Corbin wrote this article urging, as the title suggests, that we needed to change. One of his central points was the need to focus on our overall mission of developing "fully functioning healthy individuals." He suggested that it wasn't so important what kids did in our physical education programs (i.e. the activities), but rather what the activities did for them. Corbin shares his views through a couple of amusing and imaginary stories.

ENGAGING THE UNENGAGED
Public school teachers know that drug use continues to threaten their students' futures. Today, prescription drugs - easily accessible online - are for many teens the drug of choice. Isobel Kleinman, writes this month about ways that physical educators can make their classes "an adventure rather than a pain." Unfortunately, it's easy for teachers to get fixated on things that in the grand scheme aren't that important: such as dressing down. And then there's the willingness to teach things that kids enjoy doing, rather than what teachers want to teach: such as dance. Although now retired, Isobel recounts how she adapted to help her students be successful. Great advice in today's stressful world.

CEREBRAL PALSY AND STRENGTH TRAINING: BENEFICIAL OR NOT
Remember hours spent in the weight room trying to get stronger. Anyone who's participated in athletics knows the benefits of developing and maintaining a strong body. Through an extensive literature review, author Lori Bruns informs us of the ongoing debate about whether or not individuals with cerebral palsy can benefit from strength training. She reviews concerns, presents both positive and negative outcomes, and suggests a direction for future research.

HEALTHY HIGHWAY: INTEGRATING NUTRITION AND CHARACTER EDUCATION INTO PHYSICAL EDUCATION
After 30 years teaching physical education, Wendy Cooper created the "Healthy Highway" program based on the materials she'd developed and found effective in her classrooms. Her goal is to help other teachers to inject nutrition education into instruction without decreasing physical activity. Margaret Robelee, an elementary physical educator describes how "Healthy Highway" activities are being used not just in physical education classes, but also throughout the school environment at North Park Elementary School in Hyde Park, NY. Margaret concludes that Healthy Highway "is a program that allows for school individuality and is sustainable, versatile, flexible, worthwhile, and fun!"

DRUGS AND EDUCATION
"Drugs have been a problem of the Philippine government for a long time…" So begins a report from Bienvenido Constantino. Marijuana is popular among high school students, although possession can risk expulsion from school. One of the government solutions has been to promote sports participation and inter province competitions. However, a challenge yet to be overcome is the fact that many Filipino families choose not to send their children to school. Learn more about the challenges facing young people in the Philippines.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND THE SIXTH SENSE: 2025, A SCENARIO FOR THE FUTURE
In this article, author Denis Pasco imagines a future in which technology makes available a new "sixth sense." In the past we have depended on five senses to interact with the world, which left us missing a key source of information for effective decision making. He imagines the sixth sense to be a wearable device that allows users to create "mixworlds" that can seemlessly integrate information from both natural and digital sources. Sounds unreal? Perhaps, but with information technology estimated to be doubling every year, and supercomputing ability likely to be accessible soon via a portable wireless device, betting against Pasco's predictions might be a risky gamble. Take a look and feel free to email us your technological predications!

SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGISTS: THEIR PLACE IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION?
Wouldn't it be great if physical education teachers only had to think about the skills and knowledge they wanted to teach their students? Sadly, many students in our schools have personal problems that hinder their academic success. Some have physical disabilities, and others difficulty channeling their behavior appropriately. While physical educators may enjoy the advantage of teaching classes eagerly anticipated by many students, movement oriented activities present special challenges. In this article, Kayla Johanson explains how school psychologists have skills that can help physical educators to be more successful.

WHERE DOES PHYSICAL EDUCATION BELONG IN OUR SCHOOLS?
In this article, public health researcher and author James Sallis wonders aloud about the connections physical education shares with other fields. He suggests that the field's confused and presently unresolved relationships have weakened its effectiveness, and suggests that physical education's best location is within a coordinated school health program. Sallis writes that public health's priorities for physical education are not shared by the physical education field. He suggests that physical education classes should have a higher focus on getting kids more active and especially on meeting the 50% moderate to vigorous physical activity recommendation contained in the national Healthy People publications.

EDITORIAL:

PE2020 FORUM AND THE FUTURE OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION
written by Steve Jefferies, publisher, pelinks4u

One hundred and twenty five years ago a young, 25-year old medical doctor named William Anderson invited a group of 59 colleagues to a meeting at the Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn, New York. The topic of discussion was physical education. Until then physical education had consisted of a mishmash of imported German and Swedish programs, and a few domestic variations. School physical education was still in its early infancy, and the prevailing physical education focus was mostly on health and strength development.

At the meeting, participants took turns sharing what they were doing, and raising issues they felt needed discussing. Among the group was another medical doctor from Harvard College named Dudley Sargent. Between his observations, he posed to the audience three questions: Whom are we to teach? Where are we to teach? What should we teach? A hundred and twenty five years later, it's pretty evident that finding agreement on answers to these questions continues to trouble us. Physical education's mission, and how we should go about achieving that mission, simply isn't clear.

In March, deliberating physical education's future was the focus of the one-day PE2020 Forum at the San Diego National AAHPERD Convention. And like Anderson and his colleagues, more than 250 individuals spent an entire day tackling the issue. Shared by participants of vastly differing ages, from different states, teaching at different levels, the forum was a grand mix of experience and ideas. But common to all was the belief that physical education had value for today's youth.

Based on the almost 2000 essays submitted to the PE2020 web site, the meeting started out with the premise that there is widespread agreement on our vision for physical education -- we want to prepare students with the skills and knowledge they need to lead healthy lives. Where opinions differed was on the best way to reach this outcome. And as they say the devil is in the details.

Sadly, our inability to unravel these details threatens to derail our professional future. Forty years after Sargent posed his puzzling questions, another pioneer figure in our history, Jesse Feiring Williams, described physical education's development as lacking clarity and often aimless. He then proceeded to frame another question that continues to bewilder us: Is physical education an education of the physical, or an education through the physical? In other words, should our focus be on developing the body, or using movement as a vehicle to develop other worthwhile outcomes?

In a sense it's wonderful that physical educators are convinced that our subject matter can accomplish so much, but it's also the source of our undoing. If we aren't clear ourselves exactly what we are trying to do - and show we can do it - how can we convince a skeptical public of our worth? And that raises yet another problem. Arguing passionately about what we should be teaching in physical education, while certainly worthwhile within the profession, has caused us to lose sight of the fact that those outside the profession aren't really interested in this discussion. And unfortunately, it's often 'these outsiders' who are the people empowered to make decisions about whether or not to include or exclude physical education from our schools.

A key question that PE2020 Forum participants were asked to consider was "How does physical education fit within our changing world and changing schools?"

Until a few months ago the popular belief was that change, although constant, was slow. Forget that idea. If, as recently witnessed, national political systems can be transformed within a few weeks, it would be extremely foolish for us to take the future of physical education for granted. Wiser would be for us to carefully watch the winds of change, and try to anticipate how these changes may impact what we do.

For example, it's clear that technological changes will transform teaching very soon. Teaching is about giving information, in our case progressions and cues, analyzing performance, then giving feedback and corrective recommendations for improvement. Almost certainly, within the next ten years, technology will evolve that can do these tasks much faster and more accurately than any human. We saw it with Watson on Jeopardy, and we will see it soon in our local schools. When we are no longer the gatekeepers of knowledge, what then for physical education? What's left for us to do?

With our ever changing global economy, future jobs will depend on the location of a skilled workforce and will transcend borders between countries. For the United States this is a worrisome trend, for it's clear that many other countries are well ahead of us in education. By 2020, it's estimated that the USA will only have ¼ of the people it needs to fill the high skilled, high paying jobs available. One third of our students fail to graduate from high school, and an estimated 7000 drop out of high school daily. Higher education fares just as poorly with an approximate 50% graduate rate. For Black and Latino students the rates are even worse. In the future there simply won't be any jobs for our failing students, and the social and political consequences will be dire.

Why should this worry us in regard to physical education? As part of the public school system our future is intrinsically connected to school change. Fears about the failing performance of our students, and future implications for the nation, are fueling the incentive for major changes in our schools. Our current public school system, originally founded in the age of industry, won't make it in the future. Critics are urging not just evolution but revolution.

Just recently, President Obama urged Congress to focus on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) better known to many by the Bush administration "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) moniker. What the legislators will do is uncertain, but it shouldn't be a big surprise to hear a voicing of concerns about the urgency to reform our archaic school system and to raise student performance. As we all know, NCLB was not a friend of public school physical education. Significantly, few of today's schools being recognized as models of success are also touting the importance of physical education.

The challenges we face are severe but not desperate. We must address them, and act decisively to set a course for the future. Fortunately, the mood of the participants at the PE2020 Forum was both passionate and resolved. The size of the audience was evidence not only of an interest in futuristic ponderings, but also recognition of the urgency for change. Throughout the day participants shared ideas on cards, posters, and verbally. They responded to, proposed, and developed potential initiatives. It was a day of imagination and of thinking creatively; a day for individuals to resist advocacy and argument, and to inspire others and be inspired by them. The next step will be a compiling of ideas, and another online sharing for feedback and alternative proposals. Much like herding cats, getting all of us in physical education going in one direction isn't going to be easy. But change we must. Much sooner than we think our professional future may depend upon it.