Parent and Administrator Page

You are reading this because you care about your students’ wellness. More than ever before we see the need for physical activity and fitness to relieve stress and anxiety, improve immune system effectiveness, build resilience, and boost brain function and learning in our children.

The physical benefits of exercise are numerous, and more important than ever. We know that an inactive lifestyle plays a major part in most of the causes of premature death in the US, such as heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes. On the other hand, people who are active and fit have a better immune system, and are more able to fight off infections, influenza and viruses. But there may be other benefits you have not yet learned about, including the positive effects of physical activity on the brain and learning. You may also not be aware that the point of school-based physical education is to help all children become physically literate, and that there are standards and specific outcomes for each grade level that teachers should aim to meet.

In our opinion Physical Education is the most important class your child takes, assuming of course that it is quality and standards-based. No other place provides children with the knowledge, self-management skills, virtues, fundamental motor skills, and specialized motor skills in a vast variety of physical activities, -all tools needed to be physically active and healthy for life.

Our website has information that will help you understand what students should be learning in physical education, and tools to help teachers provide quality lessons. You may be surprised by what many of the grade level outcomes in the national standards state that a student should be able to do, for example:

A 4th grader should be able to identify the components of health-related fitness.
A 7th grader should be able to describe the overload principle (FITT formula) for different types of physical activity.
A 9th grader should be able to analyze the impact of life choices, economics, motivation and accessibility on exercise adherence and participation in physical activity on college or career settings.

Did You Know?

When people have the skills, knowledge and desire to be physically active we call it PHYSICAL LITERACY?
Quality physical education that is meeting the research-based national standards and grade level outcomes will lead to a physically literate person?
Physical activity, especially when it is COMPLEX, VIGOROUS and SOCIAL, leads to improved focus, attention, motivation and learning?
Physical activity can help with stress, anxiety, depression, and ADHD?
Your immune system is stronger when you are regularly physically active?
Learning skills in a variety of physical activities is important, but team sports alone will not do the trick?
Students need to learn to a variety of skills that they can do throughout life, such as dance, pickleball, self-defense, tennis, fitness activities, yoga, rock climbing, backpacking, and many more... This is the focus of the high school grade level outcomes.

You will find a lot of information on our pages that can help you decide if a physical program is of high quality.

We encourage you to support teachers in providing quality physical education. Let them know that you know they are REAL teachers, and encourage them to take the REAL teachers’ pledge if they have not already. And should you find that the program is not of high quality, we have materials for you to share to help them make needed changes.

SupportREALteachers.org promotes quality physical education through advocacy and free access to information and resources. Standards-based physical education taught by qualified teachers is more important than ever. Physical activity is the key to health and wellness, and REAL teachers do all they can to help their students become physically literate by teaching the skills, knowledge and virtues needed to be active for life.