The Internet generation.

This class of 7th graders will be the first class that their entire life they have on average spent 5 hours a day either playing video games, surfing the web, and/or watching tv.

Physical Education

The average student gets less than 20 minutes of physical exercise a day. This is true for k-12th grades. We know that good physical health impacts positively toward mental health so why does school districts not require more physical education? It seems to be a numbers game. Schools are graded on Math and English  scores not physical fitness. What has been done to change this? It seems very little the federal government has millions of dollars in grants available to schools that make physical fitness a priority. This blog is being written on an IPad provided by a federal grant. Until there is punishment for poor student fitness most school districts will continue to but health on the back burner.

Make Your School Healthier

For the first time in 10 years the obesity rate of students in the U.S. has gone down.http://carbsyndrome.com/tag/obesity-rates-going-down-in-mass/   Thanks to the increase in nutrition education and a national push for physical education in the schools. The rate of childhood obesity is still horrendous. Health of students should be the number one goal of all educators and administrators.

I recently came across http://kidshealth.org/teen/ this is a great website that discusses kidshealth. You have to log in but it is a simple process.

Many school districts across the U.S. are taking unhealthy vending machines out of the schools. This includes soda machines. The downside is companies such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi pay the schools to keep these machines in. If you look at most scoreboards from the previous 10 years you will see that scoreboard was donated by Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Some believe that the money these companies bring in is more important than the negative health aspects of the Soda. The link http://www.care2.com/greenliving/9-disturbing-side-effects-of-soda.html gives the reader 9 disturbing facts about Soda.