ESCONDIDO: Taking steps toward healthy living

Elementary students test pedometers, nutrition class

By SHAYNA CHABNER - Staff Writer | Friday, July 18, 2008 6:10 PM PDT ∞

ESCONDIDO ---- Escondido's fourth- and fifth-grade summer school students have a small, plastic blue ticker to carry in their pants and jeans pockets this summer.

The device, with a single hand that ticks away throughout the day, is not your standard timekeeper, though. Instead of tracking minutes and hours, it logs the number of steps students and teachers take each day.

"Today, I've already taken 18,000 steps," said 10-year-old Anthony Torres, who is in an English summer class with about 20 other students. "Sometimes you don't believe how many steps you took."

The pedometer is one element of a new nutrition education program that is being piloted in the Escondido Union School District this summer. Students have been urged to take at least 10,000 steps every day ---- the number of steps doctors typically recommend that a healthy adult takes in a day.

Walking 10,000 steps is also the equivalent of walking about 5 miles, Escondido teacher Peggy Jackson tells her students.

In addition to monitoring their physical activity on a weekly chart, the roughly 200 elementary students are also discussing their diets, eating portions, and healthy lifestyle habits, such as watching TV less than two hours a day.

"What we are hoping is that if (the kids) are aware of their eating habits and exercise ---- even if they are not interested now ---- later on it will matter," Jackson said. "It will make a difference."

Several students said Friday that the lessons are already making a difference.

"I'm exercising more," 10-year-old Bestabe Reyes said. "I ride my bike, walk, go on little runs."

Meanwhile, Anthony, who is walking nearly 10 miles a day based on his step-counting clock, said he has surprised his parents on numerous occasions during dinner the last two weeks by suggesting what they should and should not be eating.

Principals at some of the other summer school campuses said they too have heard positive feedback from both the teachers and the students about the nutrition courses, which were designed by the state's Dairy Council and Kaiser Permanente.

Each teacher gets to decide how they want to teach the program's 10 lesson in between the standard English and math courses that run during the summer to help kids who were behind during the school year catch up.

The district decided to launch the program during the summer because it never had time to add it into the schedule during the regular school year, said Paula Pendell, the district's coordinator of extended learning services.

In Jackson's class at Oak Hill Elementary, the last hour of every school day is dedicated to nutrition.

On Friday, Jackson's students played a Jeopardy-like quiz game, where teams of students earned points by correctly answering questions about serving sizes, the benefits of certain fruits and vegetables and how diets might change depending on gender, age and physical activity.

"We should do this every day," 10-year-old Patrick Nielsen said in between questions.

Contact staff writer Shayna Chabner at (760) 740-5416 or schabner@nctimes.com.

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