Application Deadline for Popular Fitness, Nutrition Grant Approaches; Take Opportunity to Introduce Technology that Improves Student Engagement, Achievement in PE
Teachers wanting to add IHT’s PE heart rate monitors to their curriculum have until Nov. 7, 2018 to apply for $4,000 grants available from the NFL’s Fuel Up To Play 60 program.
The Fuel Up to Play 60 grant awards winning applicants $4,000 that must be split evenly on initiatives that will help students with healthy eating and physical fitness. Teachers can use the physical fitness funding to add new technology such as the IHT Spirit System, which uses data from the wrist-based IHT ZONE heart rate monitor to help students take a direct role in learning lifelong fitness skills.
Buffalo Bills linebacker Keith Rivers spends time with students at a local school after delivering the news that the school had won a FUTP60 grant. Photo from Buffalo Bills.
The initiative’s mission reads: “Fuel Up to Play 60 is an in-school nutrition and physical activity program launched by National Dairy Council and NFL, in collaboration with the USDA, to help encourage today’s youth to lead healthier lives.” Teachers submit grant applications detailing their plans to instill healthy nutritional and exercise habits in students well beyond the classrooms.
Calling the Correct FUTP60 Play
Teachers can apply for FUTP60 grants twice each school year, so schools have more than one opportunity to make purchases with FUTP60 grants. FUTP60 awards grants on a competitive basis and includes tips on how to submit an effective proposal. Applications can be made to any of 11 different funding “plays” listed and described on the FUTP website.
FUTP provides teachers with multiple plays that deal with nutrition and activity. One of the activity-focused plays applies to PE. “All in, All Abilities – Activate Your School” provides an opportunity to apply for technology to be used specifically in class. Other options focus on adding activity throughout the school day.
Boosting a Program with PE Heart Rate Monitors
Education leaders demand data and evidence to prove a program’s effectiveness. Teachers view technology that includes the ability to simply and effectively collect and deliver that data as critical to the success of their overall program.
“Simply put, these heart rate monitors are the physical education department’s textbooks,” said Brian Rhoads, the K-12 PE Curriculum Leader for West Des Moines (Iowa) Community Schools. “This is what we need to do to help students be healthy and fit for life. If we don’t provide the necessary tools, we are doing the students a disservice.”
Teachers who’ve added the IHT Spirit System, and specifically the ZONE heart rate monitor, have seen class-wide increases in three key areas:
- Student Motivation
- Participation Levels
- Success in Reaching Individual Goals
“When we introduced the monitors I didn’t expect to see a big difference because our kids always kill it during workouts, so I thought we’d just see the same thing,” said Ridge View (Iowa) High School PE teacher Justin Kinney. “Even with our kids already performing at such high levels, I’ve had kids tell me, and it’s been visibly noticeable, that just by even having the monitor on, they take it up another notch in their training.”
After learning the basics about PE heart rate training – specifically how each student works toward their individual goal of time spent exercising in the target heart rate zones – teachers saw students work harder than ever to achieve their goals. Crestview (Iowa) School of Inquiry elementary PE teacher Chris Amundson recalls how one female fifth-grade student changed her attitude toward class after having success utilizing the technology.
“She has a real reason to push herself,” Amundson said. “She’s going all out because she’s motivated and she can see how active she is and how her body is reacting to all of this exercise. It becomes an internal motivation, an intrinsic motivation. It becomes them learning that it’s great to push yourself to new limits.”
Making the IHT Spirit System the Fitness Focus of FUTP60
When adding any unbudgeted technology to a teacher’s toolbox, finding the funding often proves the most challenging aspect. Building a successful grant application can overcome that challenge.
Each FUTP60 grant must include fitness and nutrition. IHT has created a package of heart rate monitors, software and a charging case that fits within the FUTP parameters and fulfills the fitness requirement of the application. For more information about including IHT in a FUTP60 grant proposal, contact us at spirit@ihtusa.com.
The FUTP60 program wants to help teachers instill fitness and nutrition skills students can utilize to lead healthy lifestyles into adulthood, when many of today’s students will be able to purchase their own individual heart rate monitor. Learning how to use that technology early helps students stick with it and use it to guide their fitness in the future.
“Lifetime fitness is the foundation that they need to strive for,” said Fort Lupton (Colo.) Middle School health and PE teacher Lindsay Yost. “The kids having this technology so young is very exciting. They’ll be able to take that knowledge and use it as an adult. Whatever their fitness activity may be, as an adult, having the knowledge and the desire to know how a heart rate monitor works will be a huge skill set that they can carry on with them.”
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