By CHUCK FRIEND

T-R Staff Writer

(First of four parts)



GRUNDY CENTER - In 1993, Rick Schupbach of Grundy Center was named Iowa's Physical Education Teacher of the Year. Today, he is part of a team of administrators and instructors in the Grundy Center School district that carry the term physical education to a new level of excellence.



"Most adults still look at the physical education program as being a feeder for the district's sports teams. I take offense to that," Schupbach said.



"I want to see physical education taken outside the walls of the gym and have it called, "lifestyles education."



What Schupbach is referring to is being a part of a school district that specializes in interdisciplinary units - teachers and students working together across the board to create positive learning that lasts a lifetime. Physical education is now in essence, "the process of energizing life at all ages."





Grundy Center Elementary physical education teacher, Rick Schupbach, upper right, talks with a first grade class Wednesday before they participate in the Heart Adventures Challenge Course. Schupbach beleives PE should be called "lifestyles education" and go beyond the walls of the gym, so his classes refect that concept.



The current Grundy Center unit on Heart Adventures and the Heart Adventures Challenge Course will be the topic for the second and third part of this series. Part four will feature a new fitness center that allows students and community members the chance to take wellness into the future - side by side.



"We are having a total shift in the educational process. Even here in an elementary school setting, things are not departmentalized anymore," Schupbach said. "I know it is occurring other places nationwide, but I'd like to think that Grundy Center is on the cutting edge."



Schupbach said he feels treated like an equal with the rest of the instructional staff. He said the team approach makes even a course that used to only be things like basketball and dodgeball, come alive.



Just this week Championship Videos came to Grundy Center to make an instructional video on the protocol for teaching elementary physical education. Schupbach and his students are featured using the Heart Adventures Challenge Course. Another video features Schupbach's "Basketball and Rhythms" unit, while a third features his"Rhythm for Life" movement class that he team-teaches with music instructor Bev Dirks.



For participating in the videos, the Grundy Center School district was given the $5,000 worth of equipment that makes up the Heart Adventures Challenge Course and the heart Adventures unit will now become an annual event.



Schupbach feels what is taught at the elementary level needs to be followed up on through middle school, high school and later in life. That is why he feels the community wellness center is an important asset.



"The biggest statement we as adults can make to our younger generation is that we put a high value on our health," he said.



As the make up of physical education began to shift, Schupbach became the first recipient of a $5,000 Grundy Center Education foundation grant to be used in the classroom setting. He used the money to purchase heart monitors from a company whose director of education is Grundy Center resident, Beth Kirkpatrick.



For the last 10 years of his 14 teaching at Grundy Center, Schupbach has used Polar heart monitors with his fourth and fifth grade students. He feels the monitors are appropriate tools for the individualization of physical activities. The heart rate and target heart rate zone gives Schupbach a way to mold the activity to what is appropriate for each student's activity level.

"When we used to tell the overweight kid to speed up and catch the others as they were doing something like running, we now have the monitor and tell them to stay within his or her limits," Schupbach said. "The accountability we have to our students is very exciting."



With all of the talk of budget cuts, some say cut physical education. Schupbach strongly disagrees.



"I have documentation from the monitors to back up the statement that when you cut out physical education, you are cutting the heart out of the child," he said.



Kirkpatrick, an author of several books and keynote speaker representing the Polar Electro Inc. company at physical education conferences and meetings nationwide, said the physical education teacher should be the catalyst for the community.



"Just like the librarian is the one to ask about a new book, the physical education teacher is the one the community should be looking to for help in promoting wellness and fitness," she said.



Kirkpatrick also defines the changing face of physical education as lifestyle education, then uses the acronym "Have the Secret" to define the lifestyle prescriptions: health, attitudes, values, environment, safety, education, careers, relationships, energy (physical, mental and emotional) and time.



"We need to get kids thinking at an earlier age about being and staying healthy all through their lives," Kirkpatrick said.



She said some areas in the current physical education departments bring with them concern and need changing.



"Kids are being constantly shown (and even taught by some adults) that if they are not number one, they are worthless," she said. "We need to do everything that we can to give kids the feeling that everyone has some worth."



She said units like the Heart Adventures gives the younger kids the chance to walk high school kids and adults through the course and take the role as being their leader. She said it really builds confidence.



Another area of concern is students right of privacy. She is pushing for individualized dressing and showering after middle school and high school physical education classes.



"We take a bath at home with the bathroom door closed," Kirkpatrick said. "It is barbaric to think that we should make a child shower in front of others and feel threatened in the process."



Kirkpatrick, who taught at Tilford Middle School in Vinton for 20 years, was the first schoolteacher in the nation to use heart monitors with her students. She said it was the catalyst for the new PE she calls "Ultra Physical Education."



It is divided into units reflecting: Gravionics/imagery, lifestyles education, aerobic development and activity/social development.



Gravionics is a series of exercises that take the student's joints through a full range of motion. 40 seconds are allowed on each set of exercises.



Kirkpatrick said she is always willing and ready to help out in the Grundy Center district, not just because she lives in the community, but because of its higher level of thinking from the administration and school board down through the building principals, staff and students.



"There is a genuine passion and love for what they are doing her in the district," Kirkpatrick said.

After helping with a class on the challenge course, one of the teachers, Carol Iverson commented," It is so amazing that physical education now involves the whole child - physical, emotional and academically. What they learn here in class today goes a long way in showing what it means to be a kid in the Grundy Center District."



Schupbach has a humble attitude when it comes to accepting praise for an interdisciplinary unit like Heart Adventures. In fact, he said the success at Grundy Center starts with its great leadership



"Our Elementary Principal John Stevens is without a doubt the best in Iowa," Schupbach said. " He is always challenging us as staff to be the best we can be."



Whatever the reason, there is evidence that shows that "lifestyles education" in the district has also energized the community.





Next: Meet Beth Kirkpatrick and learn about her Heart Adventures Challenge Course. It is sold worldwide by U.S. Games. Also find out where this noted author and speaker has been featured - it just might surprise you

By CHUCK FRIEND
T-R Staff Writer
(Second of four parts)

GRUNDY CENTER. Beth Kirkpatrick of Grundy Center has been a pro active part of the changing face of physical education for more than 20 years. Her Heart Adventures Challenge Course is just one of her many accomplishments.

While teaching middle school physical education in Vinton, Kirkpatrick designed a program called "Ultra Physical Education." That turned the typical physical education program into a program of lifestyles education.

"The challenge of physical education today is to do what can be done to present not just a stereotypical program of the same activities each year, but also to provide instruction to enable our students to have the mental, physical and emotional health to meet the demands of today's lifestyles and beyond," Kirkpatrick said.

Kirkpatrick's model became the catalyst for what is now known as the new PE. She felt she needed to bring technology into the classroom and a way to evaluate the assessment of her students as individuals.
When the new Polar heart rate monitors became available, Kirkpatrick became the first teacher in the nation to incorporate the use of heart rate monitors into her physical education classes.

Kirkpatrick said she began exploring cross-curricular teaching and began to ask herself, "Could something that is done in the gym become so powerful that it would draw all of the other teachers in on it?"

People now are looking for an approach that deals with that.

Kirkpatrick said the Heart Adventures Course is the best showcase of what truly individualized physical education can be. It invites a person into it and challenges every aspect of fitness including joint mobility, space awareness and hand-eye/foot coordination, focus, balance and agility. The heart rate monitors give the kids a print out as evidence of what they did, so they are able to measure that the course helps them in so many ways while being a fun activity.

The challenge course was designed in 1988 for U.S. Games, a sporting goods company that sells to the physical education world. Kirkpatrick was a consultant for U.S. Games at the time, in addition to her teaching time. She said to get the equipment she needed to advance lifestyles education, she needed to do something for the company.

The course has been sold for 12 years nationwide. It contains more than $5,000 in equipment and is used in thousands of schools nationwide.

Kirkpatrick said the American Heart Association also uses the course as a fund raising activity in shopping malls to promote heart awareness. Cardiovascular disease is the number two killer nationwide and the challenge course helps raise awareness.

"We have to have physical education in the schools, but we need a new way of teaching it," Kirkpatrick said. "The Heart Adventures Challenge course is one of those ways."

Kirkpatrick said U.S. Games asked her to design the obstacle course for a television show, to showcase the top athletes. She was totally against it and said she would design something where every kid would have an equal chance. it was then when came up with the theme of cardiovascular fitness and the red blood cell.

That became a challenge as she began to design the course and challenge every level of fitness as she diagramed the human circulatory system. The heart rate monitors became the equalizer for the students.

The course portrays the movement of red blood cells throughout the heart, lungs and brain. The participants are the actual blood cells. The path taken and activities participated in follow the actual path the blood cells would take throughout the human body. The left side of the heart is larger, therefore the left side of the course is larger and colored red. The right side is all in blue. As they students progress through the course, they all carry a red ball, upon entering the right side of the course, the ball is exchanged for blue ones. Activities include tossing balls through hoops, agility drills steeping in and out of hoops, riding scooter boards as you maneuver by use of an overhead rope, crawling through tunnels and hopping on moon-hoppers. In the brain area of the course, the students are busy juggling scarves, stacking cups or squeezing rubber balls.

The obstacle course also is intriguing because it reminds students and staff alike to eat and live healthy. It provides the opportunity for students to tell their families what happens in each part of the body as the blood cell travels through it. It is a visual learning center.

One day the instructor will even block the aorta tunnel, forcing the entire flow of the student blood cells to stop. This represents a heart attack.

Kirkpatrick is being recognized this year as the pioneer of cardiovascular testing for students using heart rate monitors. She has written a book entitled, " Cross-curriculum lessons using Polar heart rate monitors." More than 10,000 schools nationwide are now using the heart rate monitors in their physical education classes.

Kirkpatrick is now Director of Education for Polar Electro Inc. in New York City. She travels extensively addressing huge conferences for physical education instructors on the modernization of physical education into lifestyle education.

Her accomplishments have even been recognized in a book by Arnold Schwartzenegger "Arnold's Fitness for Kids." The article spotlights Kirkpatrick's innovations in "Ultra Physical Education" while teaching at Vinton. Her program was labeled as what PE can be when there is commitment behind it, and of what it must be if America is to turn around its youth fitness crisis.

Next: How is the Heart Adventures Challenge Course impacting the Grundy Center Elementary School - and the community. The excitement builds daily.

By CHUCK FRIEND
T-R Staff Writer
(Third of four parts)

GRUNDY CENTER: For the next two weeks, Grundy Center's elementary school gymnasium, is the site of a life sized red and blue obstacle course called the Heart Adventures Challenge Course.

While it provides the opportunity for kids of all ages to run, jump, and throw, the challenge course also is also dramatic enough to showcase the best of the best.

The challenge course, designed for U.S. Games by Grundy Center resident Beth Kirkpatrick, teaches the circulatory system for blood, by representing the human heart, brain and lungs.

The participants are blood cells that follow the path taken by blood in the human body. As a goal, the challenge course teaches students about healthy lifestyles while engaging them in many types of physical activity. "There are always lessons being taught to the participants on the course," Kirkpatrick said. "and these lessons do not stop within the walls of the gym."

For example, Teddy Bruns' art classes are using the lifestyle prescriptions to create art forms while talking about healthy lifestyles.

The kindergarten classes traced their footprints, then illustrated them with things the enjoy while walking, things that help relieve stress and good foods. The first grade classes will do a body puppet with a good side and a bad side.

The second grade students will mold good and bad clay foods and the third grade students heart mobiles. The fourth grade projects is origami hearts.

Bruns said the fifth grade students will make garbage bag models of the heart and lungs for use in future units.

"It has always excited me when art is combined with mother discipline," Bruns said. "This is just another way to help students enjoy their journey."

In Music, instructor Bev Dirks is using the theme "My heart is beating to the rhythm of life." She found several songs with the word heart in them and is using them in her classes. She also wrote piggy-back words to accompany the unit which are sung to Row, row, row Your Boat.

One of the verses goes: "Pump, pump, pump the blood. Make your body strong. Exercise and eat what's right, you can not go wrong."

She also uses instruments and movement to a steady beat while singing to keep the healthy lifestyles from physical education alive.

So how do math and science fit in?

Since Schupbach began using heart monitors with his fourth and fifth grade students, math instructor Kathy Ross began cross-discipline teaching with him to give students the opportunity to use the heart statistics for a unit on plotting and graphing.

Four days of monitor use are used for the exercise. The students are asked to plot their heart rates according to healthy hearts (195-155 beats), happy hearts (154 to 145 beats) and hopeful hearts ( below 144 beats).

The students also plot minutes spent in, below and above their target heart rate on each of the days. Then the information on the charts are transferred to graph form. Finally, the students are asked to answer questions such as how many days were you in the 145-190 range or how many days did you stay in your target heart rate zone?

Fifth grade science teacher Andrea Doubet shared some interesting activities with her students.
Following a pre-test, the students watched videos on the circulatory system and blood.

They then used light corn syrup, water, red food coloring, powdered cocoa and corn starch to make fake blood. At one point during the unit, the classes will dissect a beef heart, tracing the circulatory system that each of them had a chance to portray on the heart Adventures Challenge Course.

Doubet also handed out factoids, giving information about blood such as, If you take all of the blood vessels in your body and laid them end to end, they would stretch around the Equator - twice or an adult body makes about 2 million new blood cells every second?

What do students like about the Heart Adventures?

Forrest Bischoff liked the challenge course because it was a place where a kid could run, jump and throw. He said he learned that things on the left side of the heart are larger by participating on the course.

First grade student Nate Huffman said "The challenge course is really, really fun. I learned our heart is very special to us."

Riley Ackerman said, " I learned about my heart and had fun while doing it."

Superintendent Jerry Waugh had high praise for Schupbach. "He really makes things exciting and relevant for the kids."

Schupbach said area schools are invited to bring a class in to experience the challenge course by contacting Elementary Principal John Stevens. He also said the public is invited to stop by the school and watch the students in action.

NEXT: Lifestyle education extends into the community as Grundy Center brings the Leadership in Fitness Trainings (LIFT America) universal circuit approach to a new fitness center. Learn how they did it, and how your school can do it as well.

By CHUCK FRIEND
T-R Staff Writer
(Fourth of four parts)

GRUNDY CENTER: For the past two years, the National School Fitness Foundation - a public not for profit organization, has been donating a comprehensive fitness program to qualifying schools across the country through its Leadership in Fitness Training (LIFT America) program.

What the program amounts to is a school district receiving as much as 200,000 of state of the art fitness and aerobic machines - free.
It is made possible through a three year municipal lease, based on the promise to collect data on the people who use the equipment on a regular basis and furnish it to the NSFF according to its requirements
With the desired outcome to extend its vision outside the walls of the classroom and into the community, Grundy Center came on board with LIFT America and now has its new school and community fitness center in full operation.

According to Lois Hartman, high school physical education instructor at Grundy Center and fitness center director, it all started when a brochure arrived at the school inviting district representatives to a meeting in Cedar Rapids to learn how the school could get a complete fitness center - free.

"It sounded too good to be true, but we attended the meeting. The plan was just what the wellness committee had been looking for, so we investigated it further."

According to Margo Watson, representative for the National School Fitness Foundation, the school must meet the following qualifications: 1) have 1,800 square feet of space that can be used for the center during the three year lease, 2) have a dedicated director who will be committed to implement the curriculum as required; 3) conduct on site training for students and community members, 4) complete assessment reports to be sent to the NSFF all who use the center on a quarterly basis.

Watson said the district leases the equipment on a three-year municipal lease through a lending institution. The district makes monthly payments, but upon notification that the district has complied, the NSFF will cut a check in the same amount and have it in the district's hands within two to three days, thus making the center - free.

Each qualifying center gets the following:

* A Universal circuit learning center with 12 machines and 12 aerobic stations.
* Computerized assessment system (watches and transmitters) to customize the program for each participant.
* Training and certification for school staff.
* Proven curriculum to teach correct, long-life fitness principles and techniques;.
* A comprehensive ready-response medical system for heightened safety.
* A complete management system to opperate the center;.
* Ongoing customer service and maintenance
* Quality assurance program to maximize effectiveness.

Hartman said currently there are about 40 supervisors trained on the equipment, including 19 from the community. Another 30 were trained Saturday.

The fitness center is open from 5-8 a.m. during the week and 7-10 a.m. on Saturday. In the afternoon the center is open at 3:30 p.m. and remains open most days until 5:30 p.m. and until 7:30 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. It is also used by the high school physical education classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday as well as by middle school PE classes.

Hartman said individuals using the facility must be trained and must be on the universal circuit workout plan. Specificity machines and aerobic equipment may be used on the off days or after the circuit is complete.

The circuit should be completed three times per week, with a day off between lift days. Hartman said one rotation of the circuit is good, two is better and three obviously provides the best workout.

Watson said the school/community concept gets the entire family involved and sends a message to the youth is the community members are right along side of them to show they value fitness.

"At LIFT America and the NSFF, we pride ourselves in offering the best. We have everything the school and community needs to become successful in staying healthy," Watson said.

She said the program currently serves 100 schools in six states. It is a goal of the foundation to add another 20 centers per month for the remainder of 2002.

Hartman said the room housing the Grundy Center fitness center used to be the wrestling room. It is located close to the gym, which makes it handy for use during other physical education activities .

"It is great to see middle school students, high school students and community members working side by side," Hartman said. "It has been a great asset to bring connection among the residents of the community."

As long as the district is dreaming big, Hartman said the goal is to someday add a room onto the present building where the fitness center would be permanently housed. She said a committee is in place to study added wellness plans and goals.

With obesity , high blood pressure and diabetes in youth coupled by continually sagging self esteem reaching unprecedented levels, Watson feels that LIFT America is the answer. She said programs of as little as 30 minutes per week can provide outstanding results very quickly.

Benefits include increased muscular strength, extended joint flexibility, enhanced aerobic capacity of the heart and circulatory system, improved body composition, less stress and more energy, more self-confidence, heightened self esteem and a surge in positive ability to perform and produce.

Watson said the NSFF will be introducing a new program for elementary students on Nov. 9 at its headquarters in American Fork, Utah.

People who are interested in learning more about the Grundy Center program or who want more information about the LIFT America program can contact Business Agent Bill Itzen in Grundy Center at 319-824-3470.

With physical education shifting to lifestyles education, the addition of the fitness center is just another way that the Grundy Center community plans to remain on the cutting edge.