By Walt Unks
Winston-Salem Journal
When physical-education teacher Shawn Marek arrived at Latham Elementary School in 2006, he found the equipment closet depleted.
"There was a box of jump ropes, some playground balls, basic PE equipment. I did the best that I could. I had to be creative," he said.
Marek began searching the Internet for grant opportunities and came across the Web site DonorsChoose.org. The organization matches public-school teachers' requests with donors from across the country. As of April 1, there were 69 active grant requests from Forsyth County.
In the three years that Marek has been at Latham, 10 of his DonorsChoose grant requests have been fulfilled. The grants, which ranged from $120 to about $500, have bought broomball equipment, pickleball sets, box soccer equipment, soccer goals, floor-hockey sticks, pedometers, heart-rate monitors, and safety mats for use under the gymnasium's basketball goals.
"I enjoy teaching sports that they haven't experienced yet," Marek said. "It's nice to see the look on (students') faces after they have played something that they have never played before. They just get really excited. You hear them talking in the hallway or telling their teachers about how much fun they had."
One repeat contributor to Marek's grant requests is Carolina Panthers Charities, which partially or fully financed three of his proposals.
Riley Fields, the director of community relations for the Panthers, said that DonorsChoose approached the team through a grant-making process.
"We initially funded the broomball project in the fall of 2007, then later in the year, last spring, we came back with the other grants," Fields said.
Similar to hockey, broomball is an ice sport that originated in Canada, but it uses a ball and modified brooms instead of a puck and sticks. At Latham, students play on the floor and stage in the gymnasium.
"It was unusual that Mr. Marek received three grants (from the Panthers), but the committee liked his approach to physical education, thinking outside the box to provide children a different approach to exercise," Fields said.
"Take his broomball application as an example. He was looking for an activity with broad appeal that was easy to play, yet used some of the existing equipment he already had. The game uses the building blocks of cardiovascular, motor-skill development, spatial awareness, and teamwork that are used in so many other sports."
Latham is classified as a Title I school, meaning that a high percentage of students come from low-income households. At Latham, more than 95 percent of children get free or reduced-price lunches, school officials said.
Despite additional financing that comes to the school through Title I, Marek said he gets only $200 a year to buy equipment.
"If I was to wait to build up enough funds to buy some of this equipment, it would take a long time," he said.
Marek said that one of his major concerns is obesity among local students.
Nancy Hoover, the program specialist for physical education and health for Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools, said that a 2008 body-mass-index screening shows that 37.2 percent of first-graders and 44.1 percent of fourth-graders in the school system are classified as overweight or obese under federal guidelines.
As a physical-education teacher in Buffalo, Marek said he saw students every day or every other day.
"Moving to North Carolina, it was kind of a shock to me to only being able to see students once a week," he said. "For some students this is the only opportunity they have for exercising, which is really unfortunate."
He cited safe places to exercise in their neighborhood, weather, and such distractions as television and video games as reasons for the lack of physical activity in youth. He said he hopes that introducing students to different sports will encourage them to live physically healthy lifestyles.
Marek continues to make proposals for new equipment. His most recent request was for 12 tetherball sets, which were installed on the school's playground in December.
"It gives them something else to do besides kickball and jump rope," he said.
http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2009/apr/07/sweeping-in-the-new/news/
No comments:
Post a Comment