Kyrene del Pueblo Middle School Principal Jama Nacke is getting her students moving with more exercise activities scheduled throughout the school day, utilizing teams of teachers to implement movement breaks to help kids improve academically.
“The more cardiovascular fit kids are, the more they are going to learn,” Nacke said. “We like to say, ‘when the bum is numb, the brain is dumb.’”
To get students out of their chairs and their blood pumping, Pueblo teachers began implementing short breaks during the 68 minute classes.
“Kids are more likely to stay engaged for 20 minutes at a time, instead of 60,” Nacke said. “We found these brain breaks help students focus much more efficiently.”
In addition to regular physical education courses, Nacke said teams of students spend two days of each week outside during “academic labs,” when students play a variety of exercise-themed games.
Normally, PE classes are considered elective, and are not taken by all students. Some don’t even take PE during their three years at Pueblo, Nacke said.
“They have an academic lab in the middle of the day, four days a week, with one to two days of activity-based lessons,” she said. “This is what they do instead of silent reading or math tutoring on a couple days.”
Pueblo students are also getting more fitness in classrooms by sitting on chairs with more freedom of movement. Nacke said she recently ordered sets of exercise balls to replace chairs with in two classrooms.
“Right now, students are sitting on ‘T’-shaped chairs,” she said. “And, you can see a huge difference. Some kids are so engaged, but they need to be moving around a little bit more.”
After a well-known researcher in the field of movement, presented findings to the district last year, Nacke developed “action-brain-connection” (ABC) teams to regularly implement the brain breaks.
“The team of teachers who are doing this have brain breaks about every 15 minutes for kids,” she said. “The brain break is designed to get the blood flowing, and we also get both sides of the brain going by doing various activities.”
The idea is to have 60 minutes of student exercise every day, Nacke said.
“We are trying to get our kids healthy, for one, because we want them to have a longer life span and live healthy lives,” she said. “And two, so they academically improve.”
Nacke said current researchers have found Alzheimer’s disease in kids as young as 10, and believe poor diet with little exercise is related.
“Kids eat all these carbohydrates and then just sit playing video games,” she said. “Research is showing it has an effect on their brains.”
Pueblo’s cafeteria has also been modified to include more nutritional lunches, with baked, instead of fried, foods.
“Teachers are also going to be doing monthly challenges, teaching the kids to read the calories on snack labels,” Nacke said. “With the proper fitness and nutrition, we expect to make a huge difference to our kids’ health.”
