At Frias Elementary School, students are encouraged to have role models–but the Eli Mannings and Hannah Montanas of the world aren’t exactly what the staff has in mind.

Instead, FLIP (Frias Lifestyle Improvement Program) is making students aware of healthy choice–making at school, where they are learning from the examples set by their teachers.

“I heard of a study last summer which found that with education, children will make changes for healthy choices for six months. Without role modeling, the children will revert to their old habits,” Frias school nurse Megan Pierce explained. “We can’t make parents be role models, but this program [FLIP] allows the school staff to be role models for students.”

A School District nurse at the elementary and middle school level for eleven years, Pierce credits the idea for FLIP to the staggering statistics regarding the growing rate of obesity and the predictions for America’s future.

“By the year 2025, statistically speaking, 100 percent of the population in the United States will be considered obese, children today have a life expectancy less than their parents, and one out of three children today will be diagnosed with diabetes by the time they reach adulthood,” Pierce summarized, noting that simply telling children and parents about the importance of healthy diets and exercise just isn’t enough.

FLIP is a “multifaceted” program with the purpose of making the healthy choices of educators visible to the students. Pierce, along with Daryl Matsumaya, Karisa Garcia, Toni Shina, Andrea North, Michelle Berkowitz, Barb D’Erole, and Janice Heffernan, all Frias educators, formed a committee to implement the program at the classroom level. “Mostly the staff is trying to MOVE more,” Pierce said. “Our main goal is to have students see staff members making changes in the choices we make.”

“Teachers began walking with their classes because the enthusiasm was so great,” Pierce explained. “Teachers have begun to walk with their classes prior to starting classroom exercises or at the end of the day. Some walk the long way to the restrooms. Some use the opportunity to take lessons outside. Some staff members will use twenty minutes of their lunch to eat and the remaining ten to walk, wearing visible buttons that say ‘I’m walking’ so students see that teachers are trying to get in more activity.”

Teachers have also taken the program into the classroom by using Body Mass Indexes (BMIs) anonymously submitted by staffers and the nutritional pyramid in their math and science lessons.

And the response to the program has been enormous, Pierce said, from both the children and the educators. “The students have been very enthusiastic. They are very conscious of their pedometers and the steps they are taking,” she explained. “We even had a naming contest with the students.” And from this naming contest both the FLIP and the program motto, “Don’t Sit, Be Fit” were born.

In addition to teaching students the importance of healthy choices, Pierce and the FLIP committee at Frias hope that the effects of the program will begin to follow the students home as well.

“We are with the students a third of their day, 180 days of the year,” Pierce said. “I believe that today’s parents are bombarded with information about the predictions of our children’s future health. I know so many parents are busy and struggle to make good choices as well. So not only are we becoming active participants in helping the youth of our schools, we can also help parents and families.”

In short, Pierce believes programs which encourage healthy role models for children at the elementary level are essential in the children’s development. And while FLIP is still in its infancy, it has a promising future.

“The realization that we, as school staff, can be role models is underestimated,” Pierce said. “What we do in the classrooms and on the school campus in terms of education is so important. A child who isn’t healthy can’t learn, and I think this not only helps children become healthy now, but as adults, as role models, we can help students become healthy adults.”

Misti R. Brock
Publications Specialist

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