By Pyc Fitness
©2004-2008
STAMFORD — It's hard to imagine that Harvalene Carter is uncomfortable going anywhere.
Well-spoken, well-dressed and self-possessed, Carter is a 16-year-old senior at Westhill High School who spoke Tuesday in front of her principal, superintendent and state officials at ribbon cutting for Westhill's new fitness center. There is something that makes her quail, however: working out in the high school's weight room with the jocks.
"Football players? Looking at me? Oh no, no, no," said Carter, who told the officials that she'd been overweight for a long time. "Thank you. I feel comfortable here."
The Westhill fitness center, a room filled with treadmills and other exercise equipment, is one of two $40,000 fitness centers built this summer at Stamford High and Westhill by Stamford Hospital and the public schools. The Westhill room, which was just completed Monday, according to physical education department head Camille Quattrocchi, was put into use on Wednesday.
"We have an after-school program here called Healthy Habits at the Hill," said Quattrocchi, adding that 60 teens had signed up to start working out after school. Carter is one of them. She will be on the treadmill three times a week, and she is excited about it.
The construction of the two facilities is a bid to control obesity in teens, according to cardiologist Edward Schuster, MD, of the Stamford Hospital Foundation, which helped secure an $80,000 grant from the Alexandra and Steven Cohen Foundation to fund the centers.
"This is the first generation of children not expected to live longer than their parents," said Schuster, quoting statistics from the American Heart Association. The reasons for the potentially shorter lifespan of the nation's children, said Schuster, are obesity-related. Youngsters are more likely to have hypertension, diabetes and other such problems.
The schools' new fitness centers are equipped like health clubs; treadmills, stationary bikes, rowing machines and other cardiovascular equipment will fill converted spaces in both high schools. According to Schuster, a parent at Westhill, the centers are is intended for teens who wouldn't normally be drawn to a fitness center.
The new fitness centers are a part of a very broad health and wellness initiative which was started last year by Superintendent Joshua Starr.
"It's more than just the [Connecticut Academic Performance] Test, it's more than just the [Connecticut Mastery Test] scores," said Starr. "It's lifetime habits that make a student fit and healthy."
Thanks to the work of the district's health and wellness committee this summer, the district's gym and health curriculums look different this year, the schools' food service provider Sodex'ho is offering food that comes straight from farms — nothing is fried — and programs like the fitness centers are appearing in the schools.
"The soda machines are gone," said Diane Blackwell, a retired physical education teacher who is leading the health and wellness committee and who is acting as a consultant to the Stamford Public Schools.
Blackwell worked with a committee of physical education and health teachers to include more math, literacy and science in the physical education current program.
"Currently there is a math component in all of the lessons," said Blackwell. Children monitor their own heart rates, for example.
Lifetime sports — activities that students can continue to do as hobbies long after they graduate from school — like yoga, skateboarding, rollerblading and the video game Dance Dance Revolution, also may be incorporated into the curriculum. At Turn of River, said Blackwell, rebounding and Tai Bo have been added to the curriculum.
The district is also hoping to train and certify older students as coaches and officials for team sports, like basketball.
"They will leave school with credentials in hand and be able to do something they love and also earn a living," she said.
Jean Mee, Ed.D., consultant for physical education for the Connecticut State Department of Education, was also present on Tuesday. She was impressed by the Stamford health and wellness initiative.
"This is such an exciting set of possibilities here in Stamford," said Mee. "It seems to me that it should not be rocket science, getting more oxygen into people's brains."
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