Clinton County students are now in their third week of school and with every new school year, comes new and exciting activities for students.

This year is no exception with the development of the Physical Education Program or PEP.

This program has been designed to help students become more active throughout the day.

The funding came to Clinton County in the form of a grant and it has allowed for the purchase of new equipment, new training for P.E. teachers and it will provide students with the knowledge of better eating habits and exercise training.

Heading up the P.E. classes at each school will be: Early Childhood Center P.E. Teacher Cindy Wallace; Albany Elementary P.E. Teacher Jennifer Preston; Clinton County Middle School P.E. Teacher Amanda Moons and Clinton County High School P.E. Teacher Sam Gibson.

Tyonia Sinclair has been named director of the program and is very excited to install this program into the school system.

“All the teachers have been trained in the SPARK curriculum. This is a new curriculum they are going to be using,” Sinclair said. “You are going to see a lot of different things going on inside those gyms.”

The goal of the PEP is to reduce childhood obesity in Clinton County by increasing the effectiveness of the district’s physical education and nutrition programs.

It was also designed to facilitate development of lifetime healthy eating and active living habits among Clinton County students.

With the new physical education program, each student can develop an individualized physical education plan. All physical education teachers will use the TriFit Assessment System that includes everything to perform a complete health and fitness assessment, including blood pressure, body weight, cardiovascular levels, strength, flexibility and body composition.

“Hopefully this will get more students moving and enjoying physical education instead of hating it,” Sinclair said. They have all been trained on TriFit and what that is, is a body mass index computer. Each student will have a body analysis done and it will tell the teacher what needs to be sent home with this student.”

The TriFit Assessment System will allow each individual student to personalize their own activities in order to reach their full potential for physical education.

Sinclair said the TriFit system is a good tool for every student. With each person’s body being different, it allows teachers to recognize what exercises and or food will be healthy for each individual student.

“Those TriFit computers probably cost us around $10,000 each and we have one at each school,” Sinclair said. “They are top notch.”

Many items have been installed and are operational for the students. P.E. teachers are incorporating their lessons of health and fitness into the class room and it is giving the students something new to do for physical activity.

“The first thing we’ve done since the kids have been out of school is put an outdoor fitness center in,” Sinclair said. “Each school has an outdoor fitness center. These outdoor fitness centers are not playgrounds, they are geared toward physical fitness.”

Sinclair said the equipment is more workout type equipment and is focused on cardiovascular training.

“We are also putting in equipment at the high school on the stage area,” Sinclair said. “Hopefully it will be installed by the end of September. That’s going to be a good plus for the gym.”

After the indoor fitness center is completed at the high school, Sinclair said she wants to have an open house to allow parents to come in and workout with their child.

“That might be something to do around October,” Sinclair said. “We want them to be able to see what this money is going toward.”

Other than doing exercises, Sinclair said nutrition is a huge factor in the program. It will be designed to help students change their eating habits in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle.`

“We are going to be doing a lot of nutrition activities with each school,” Sinclair said.

On Monday, CCMS P.E. Teacher Amanda Moons began a new activity that taught one of her classes the game of Cricket. She said the students enjoy learning new games and have a good time playing them.

“When I first got here, there wasn’t anything but a few deflated basketballs and a couple of tennis rackets,” Amanda Moons, CCMS P.E. teacher. “This stuff is great. It’s new and fun.”

The grant also included sending the P.E. teachers to training on all of the new curriculum and equipment.

“They trained us on all of this stuff and they had us out there doing it,” Moons said. “It was a blast.”

Sinclair is now working on getting all of the equipment installed and operational, in order for students to begin using the equipment right away. She also said there were more things coming in the future months.

“We are in phase II of our grant. Phase I was the assessment phase of our grant … learning what we need here. Do we need fitness centers outside? Do we need fitness centers inside?” Sinclair said. “The second phase is getting the equipment in and getting the teachers training on those machines and up to-date.”

Phase III of the grant will be incorporating climbing walls for the schools, dance revolution for each school and adding more physical education equipment each year.

“We are trying to get each child 60 minutes of activity each day,” Sinclair said. “We can give them so much at the schools, but then they can go home and continue it. We are also trying to incorporate nutrition into this program by telling them they need three to four vegetables and three or four fruits per day.”

With all this new information and new equipment, students will be able to go home and explain to their parents what they are doing during physical eduction class. Some of the teachers are even producing a newsletter to better inform the parents.

“Jennifer Preston is for sure making a newsletter to send home to the parents,” Sinclair said. “Amanda is new and I haven’t got to talk to her much, but I think she will do that as well. The newsletters will tell the parents what their child is doing, and things they can do at home to help their child with physical education.”

Other than doing activities during school hours, students will be able to use the equipment after school as well.

“We are planning on having a lot of after school activities. We would like to start a gymnastics class for the elementary age and we would like to start a martial arts class and we want to work our dance revolution into the high school/middle school age,” Sinclair said.

As the program incorporates nutrition into the physical education classes, Sinclair said other agencies will be helping including the Extension Agency, 21st Century Learning, the Clinton County Health Department, Youth Service Centers, and local doctors.

“They will be coming into our classrooms and doing presentations and hopefully we can do different things with the ‘Big Blue Shape-up,’” Sinclair said. “I think it’s going well. Everything is falling into place. I think the parents see the need and hopefully they will stay involved.”