One step at a time

It’s easy to spot one of Andrew Hershey’s students.

The Meridian Park Elementary students in his PE class are the ones who never seem to stop moving. From the moment they pass through the doorway to the gym, they walk, run, skip, cartwheel – anything to keep moving for the 30-minute, twice a week class.

What’s their motivation?

A tiny yellow box called a “pedometer” that they clip onto their pants pocket to digitally log how many steps they take in any given amount of time.

Purchased this year through a grant from the Shoreline Public Schools Foundation, the $25 little jewels have really paid off.

“Some kids come to class early to get in extra steps – It’s motivational and its gotten everybody to be more active,” Hershey said.

Dylan Coffman, 9, said wearing the pedometer in class has made him more active outside of school.

“A lot of times I’ll forget I don’t have the pedometer on, and I’ll keep trying to get steps,” Coffman said. “It’s really fun.”

And at a time when childhood and adult obesity rates continue to rise, that means a lot.

“The pedometers have changed my class from a 30- minute anaerobic class to a 30-minute aerobic class – they don’t stop once they get those pedometers on,” Hershey said.

According to Hershey, kids should take approximately 11,000 steps every day for general fitness, and 12,000 to promote weight loss. Kids have logged up to 3,000 steps just during Hershey’s class.

To set a good example, Hershey wears his own pedometer throughout the day, and instead of sitting on the sidelines during class, he walks around the gym.

The success of the new program lies partially in the immediate feedback the pedometers offer; kids can see the number rise with each step, Hershey said.

And at the end of every class, each students’ steps are recorded in Hershey’s Palm Pilot to track their progress throughout the year. This system allows kids to work to beat their own personal record, rather than compete against their classmates.

“It’s all personalized,” Hershey said.

This year, the pedometers are primarily used in third grade P.E. classes. Next year, Hershey said, he hopes to use pedometers in all Meridian Park P.E. classes.

“The pedometers will be a piece of equipment in P.E. from now on,” Hershey said.

The success of the pedometer program has leaked into other subject areas at Meridian Park as well.

Use of the pedometers and the information they give has been integrated into this year’s third grade math curriculum; in one class, students measured how many steps were in a mile and throughout the year they have been “walking” across a U.S. map to see how far they can go. In another, students used their graphing skills and logged steps to show how their activity level rises and dips throughout the day while doing various activities.

“Using the pedometers provides a context and physical identification for them – it’s not just a sheet of numbers out of nowhere,” said Meridian Park third grade teacher Jonathan Nessan. “That can be one of the hardest things, getting kids to understand the abstracts in math.”

Nessan said it was a “no brainer” adding the pedometer program to the regular math curriculum.

“The kids are very engaged when they’re (using the pedometers). The days we use them are the days they’re fired up to be in school, and it’s just because of a little pedometer on their waist,” Nessan said. “Watching them get excited and involved like that is really tremendous.”