Physical Education

Josephine Ella "Jo" Fiske, a longtime physical-education professor, coach and referee at Goucher College who ran races into her 90s, died Monday of a stroke at the Edenwald retirement community in Towson. She was 101. "She believed in doing what she practiced and practicing what she says," said her second cousin, Carol Parmenter of Roland Park. Miss Fiske was born in Greenfield, Mass., and graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1926. She also studied at the Boston College of Physical Education.

Bashers of physical education have had a proverbial field day shrinking the subject nationally, as well as in Maryland and in Howard County, in recent years. For example, the only physical-education requirement for graduation from a Maryland public high school is completion - between ninth and 12th grades - of two of 16 quarters in the subject. Another: Howard middle-schoolers can opt to start studying a foreign language or playing a stringed instrument - if they forgo phys ed. Now, reputable researchers in medicine and education are identifying disturbing fallout: America has huge, growing numbers of fat, sedentary children with little knowledge of diet, activity and how the body functions best.

Judith was home sick when she called for the day's homework and got the news: Her basketball teammates had elected her one of three captains. She just started high school this year, and she had turned one possible school down because, among other reasons, "they don't take sports seriously enough." Watching players do agility drills in the movie Coach Carter during winter break, she said, "That's what we should be doing." She went to school on a morning she'd been feeling queasy rather than miss practice.

Bill would require physical education through 5th grade A Senate committee started work yesterday on a bill that would eventually require all Maryland children through fifth grade to have 2 1/2 hours a week of physical education. A similar bill passed the Senate last year but failed in the House of Delegates. Maryland officials, like those in other states, are alarmed about rising obesity rates among children - but they're not sure how to fix the problem or what schools can do to slim their students.

American youths are so out of shape and childhood obesity has reached such alarming proportions that almost anything schools can do to encourage more physical fitness is welcome. So an effort by Maryland's General Assembly to require more school time for physical education deserves consideration - though it's too bad it takes a state law to get schoolchildren hopping, jumping and running around. In fact, good physical health, which is a product of exercise, contributes to academic performance.

PHILADELPHIA -- It's a beautiful spring day, perfect for riding a bike, which is what the class of eighth-graders at Maple Point Middle School is doing. They whoop and holler as they crash through woods behind the school and lunge toward a steep hill.Sweating and panting, the bikers pedal furiously up the hill as their teacher shouts at them to shift gears."If a 51-year-old lady can do it, 12-year-old kids can do it," says gym teacher Jane Gibbons, laughing as she reaches the crest of the hill -- the only one to do so.This is gym?

J. Richard Carpenter, Western Maryland College's athletic director for the past 15 years, has announced his resignation, effective July 1.Carpenter, 52, will retain his position as professor of physical education and exercise science, and will coordinate the department's graduate program, college officials said. He was hired at Western Maryland as a physical education instructor in 1969."There has been an evolution in college athletics over the past several years," Carpenter said in a statement.

Kids plopped in front of the television or computer or furiously playing a video game: It's a typical scene in many American homes. The great outdoors has lost its appeal as technology seduces kids into a sedentary lifestyle.Inactivity and poor nutrition put them at risk as adults for obesity, heart disease and cancer, says fitness guru Dr. Kenneth Cooper in his book "Fit Kids! The Complete Shape Up Program from Birth through High School" (Broadman & Holman Publishers, $14.99)."Most of the risky behaviors for these killer diseases begin in childhood," Cooper says.

Rose Elizabeth Butler, a West Baltimore neighborhood activist and retired city school physical education teacher, died of cancer Monday at her Walbrook home. She was 72.In 1992, Mrs. Butler was co-chairwoman of BUILD -- Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development -- when the group fought for and obtained a living wage ordinance from the City Council."I can remember walking in Mondawmin Mall with her [and] it was hard to get through because so many former students came up to her," said Arnie Graf, regional director for the Industrial Areas Foundation.

SINCE Cleveland Avenue Elementary School near Atlanta, Ga. opened two years ago, students have sat in ergonomically correct desks, eaten in a modern new cafeteria, even pecked away at computers. Cleveland is a school with its eye on the future.It's hard to imagine those students having fond memories of the place 30 years from now.This isn't the little red schoolhouse. It's a school that might have been designed by efficiency experts, one whose main purpose seems to be productivity. There are no monkey bars, no swings, no ball field.

A couple of months ago, Travis Justice wouldn't have dreamed that he would be riding in a limousine and spending most of the school day with Baltimore Ravens star Todd Heap. The 10-year-old fifth-grader at Elkridge Elementary School entered the NFL's Take a Player to School contest on a whim. He's glad he did. "It tops everything," Travis said. "That was the best day of my life." After picking Travis up from his home in Elkridge, Heap spent more than three hours at the school Tuesday.

Warren E. "Libby" Mitzel, a retired physical-education instructor who taught in city public schools, died of cancer Oct. 22 at the Charlestown retirement community. She was 94. Warren Elizabeth "Libby" Mitzel, the daughter of a Pennsylvania Railroad freight conductor and a homemaker, was born at home on Keswick Road in Hampden. She was raised on a family farm in Baltimore County and in 1929 returned to Hampden with her family. To help support her family during the Depression, Miss Mitzel dropped out of school and went to work for Stieff Silver Co., where she became an engraver.

Students at Corkran Middle School in Anne Arundel County had quite the exercise routine Tuesday. They ran agility drills on their school field with Baltimore Ravens center Matt Birk. They stretched with Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo. They high-fived Gov. Martin O'Malley. And they heard repeatedly from some of their sports heroes that they should get out from in front of the computer and TV and get some exercise. Shannon Thomas, an eighth-grade student, bounced excitedly as she watched her classmates run and jump.

Kathleen Donaldson has always been physically active. In high school, she played volleyball and softball and attended college on a softball scholarship. By the time she earned a bachelor's degree in physical education from Western Michigan University in 1998, she understood the value of physical activity and she wanted to teach her students the same lesson. "I wanted to help make physical activity not just something the children do, but also a part of who they are," said Donaldson, who has been teaching at Edgewood High for the past seven years.

Carrying suitcases filled with teaching aids and carry-on bags stuffed with clothing and personal items, several Harford County educators traveled to Kenya last summer. This group of educators knew they were headed to a school where the children sharpened pencils with razor blades and used stone pebbles to count. "We have grown so used to having certain supplies when we teach that they don't have in Mathare Valley," said Nadine Wellington, principal of Mountain Christian School, who went to Kenya with a group of educators in 2007.

More than 30 years ago, physical-education teachers at Bel Air Middle School started a Turkey Trot, a fun run held around Thanksgiving. The program has grown each year, with more than 1,250 students participating. Unlike other Turkey Trots, which are designed to raise money for a charitable cause, the Bel Air Middle event is a fun run to promote fitness, said Jeff Eaton, the physical-education department chairman who heads the program. Five other teachers at the school also work with Eaton on the program.

Michael Mariano Sabino, once one of Baltimore's premiere distance runners and a former physical education teacher, died Friday of natural causes while recovering from pneumonia at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 69 and lived in Cockeysville. Mr. Sabino was born in Scotch Plains, N.J., and began competitive distance running while attending Plainfield High School in Plainfield, N.J. He told The Evening Sun in a 1973 article that at 5 feet 4 inches and 115 pounds, he was too small to play football or basketball.

With three years to implement a new law requiring Maryland schools to provide disabled students access to sports programs, state education officials say they will spend the coming academic year collecting data and drafting regulations in hopes of setting up a smooth introduction of the measure. In the spring, the General Assembly passed the bill, titled Fitness and Athletics Equity for Students with Disabilities, which requires schools to allow athletes with disabilities to play wheelchair basketball or tennis, to swim or to otherwise play sports, either among themselves or side by side with able-bodied students.

Eastport teacher to be honored Eastport Elementary School physical education teacher Stephanie Legacy has been named the National In-School Educator of the Year by the Bowling Proprietor Association of America. Legacy will be honored during an all-expense-paid trip to the BPAA's annual conference June 24-27 in Orlando, Fla. "Stephanie is a self-motivated and amazing educator. Not only has she integrated our physical education program with a bowling curriculum, she incorporates all subjects and social skills into her lessons," said Eastport Elementary principal Lynn Evans.

C. Samuel Leishure, a retired Howard County guidance counselor and athletic coach, died of a heart attack Sunday at St. Joseph's Medical Center. The Reisterstown resident was 65. Born in Baltimore and raised on Upmanor Road, he was a 1961 graduate of Edmondson High School, where he was a member of the football, basketball and baseball teams and worked closely with coaches Julian Dyke and Lefty Elliott. On the advice of his Edmondson coaches, he went on to the old Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College.