“I utilize the parent email feature,” Spencer Center for Gifted and Exceptional Students PE Teacher Robbie Lazear said. “I know that as a dad when I ask my kids what they did during the school day, their common response is I don’t know. At least on the days my students have PE, their parents know at least one thing they’ve done because it’s going to be listed in the email. It takes no extra time for me to do that and it especially helps when sending out fitness assessment results directly to families.”
Connecting Beyond Parent-Teacher Night with Heart Rate Data
The IHT ZONE monitors provide several ways for teachers to engage with parents on the traditional Parent-Teacher Nights.
For Portage Central Middle School (Mich.) teacher John Dunlop, the monitors provide him with individual heart rate data specific to each student that he shares as he explains his program in 1:1 meetings.
“You can show objectively who is working hard,” Dunlop said. “It is no longer a subjective thing. Now it’s done fairly.”
After years of having to trust his eyes and his perceptions to assess students, Dunlop is grateful to utilize a tool that gives him objective data on every student, whether he’s able to keep a close eye on them during class or not. The data tells the story.
“What’s the old quote?” Dunlop said. “‘Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.’ (W. Edwards Deming in ‘Out of the Crisis’). Well, I have data and it helps me learn about how I do things. To have it to share with the kids and parents and to use it as a teacher, this is something that is very beneficial.”
At Pleasant Valley Junior High (Iowa), the teaching team invites parents to experience PE as their children do. Parents wear the IHT ZONE monitors and their students lead them through the types of fitness activities they perform during class.
“The parent comes with their student and the student walks them through the entire thing, from putting on the heart rate monitor to choosing the activity, all the way through checking the monitor back in at the end,” PE Teacher Caitlin Schoville explains.
The experience is often eye-opening for parents, many of whom went through a much different version of PE class during their student days.
“The big thing for is us being able to share our ‘why’ with our parents,” PVJH teacher Sophie Haarhues said. “Our kids’ parents PE class wasn’t anything like how we structure ours. There is still this old reputation and stereotype about PE that is negative. We want to show parents what is our purpose. We want kids to be healthy. How do we get kids’ heart rate up? We show that everyone is working.”
“Parents thought it was a lot different from the type of program that they went through,” PVJH teacher Maddie Reynolds said. “It was very cool for them to see the feedback (from the heart rate monitors). I think the parents also enjoyed working out with their students.”
Creating Open Lines of Communication Year-Round
It’s one thing for parents to simply start receiving emails. The emails become more powerful when teachers can explain face to face what’s coming, as many do during either their PE open houses or during the 1:1 conversations during parent-teacher conferences.
Great Valley High School PE (Penn.) teacher Dustin Kasper wanted to respect the inboxes of his students’ parents, so he asked them during his open house if they wanted to receive the emails. Their response floored him.
“It was unanimous, and they all said it with the same voice,” he said. “‘Put our email address down, we want to see this.’ It’s a big reminder to me…don’t assume, just ask the question.”
And Kasper knows the parents are reading the emails, sometimes as soon as they hit the inbox.
“I hear from kids during the day,” Kasper said. “One said she got a text from her mom after class and mom was asking what happened and telling her she ‘needed to step it up a notch.’”
Kasper isn’t the only teacher who hears that parents are reading the emails.
“I’ve gotten quite a few emails from parents just saying how much they appreciate getting that email,” Baldwin Creek Elementary School (Wy.) PE teacher Misty Atnip said. “It’s a great little thing (for parents) to get a little snapshot of their kid’s day while they are at work.”
Boost Student Wellness with IHT ZONE heart rate monitors:
