Introduction
Human development refers to the process of growing to maturity. A child needs to have good physical activities, in order to develop to a healthy adult. Young adolescents, especially at the ages of ten to fourteen years, need to indulge in physical activities to ensure a healthy ushering to the adulthood. Teenagers at this age need to have exercises to avoid crawling of their metabolism. Slowing down of children’s metabolism increases the chances of growing fat, and subsequently growing obese. In most cases, obese adolescents grow to be obese adults. This is a great problem since as adults, they are likely to face risks of diseases like heart disease, diabetes, gout, and arthritis.
Studies have depicted that obese teens have twice as much risk of death in their later ages as compared to teens that are not obese. Further, physical activity is important because it increases the efficiency of the pumping of the blood by the heart. In return to exercising aerobically, an adolescent will think more clearly as well as raise his/her high density lipoprotein (HDL) in the arteries, which will be beneficial in later years since it reduces incidents of heart attacks and strokes. Through proper physical activities, strong bones and muscles are developed; any incidents of undeveloped bones are therefore not likely to occur. Good physical activities increase the life expectancy of an individual (McDevitt, 2010).
Teachers have a great role to play in preventing obesity in schools. They can use in- school advertising programs to advocate for healthy foods. Having these adverts that promote healthy foods among children will make them conscious of the right food to take, since they will be visualizing the logos of brand of foods that are beneficial to them. The school environment needs to reinforce appropriate nutrition and physical activities, and messages passed in school should not have conflicting interests, but should be aimed at ensuring that children only get to learn about healthy living. Teachers should also teach healthy education in their curriculum. They should also ensure that nutrition and instruction of proper dietary behavior are included in the lectures. Through highlighting on the importance of nutrition and health education, the student will be able to main physical activeness and a health living life style (Paxton, 2006).
Teachers have the responsibility of ensuring that students strictly adhere to the physical activity schedules. Ensuring that these programs are well followed means that the students will achieve among other things physical fitness, skills, good health and achieve educational goals. Valuing this curricular area will help the children develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to be physically active both in and out of school and subsequently throughout their lives (Dietz & Lee, 2004). The attitudes of teachers need to be biased when it comes to addressing obese students. Some people refer obese students as being lazy, sloppy and in lack of self-control. For teachers, it is their responsibility to ensure that they act as an encouragement to them and avoid any stigma likened with being obese.
Teachers should also be role models to the students. Through observing good diet and engaging themselves in physical activities, the students are able to learn from them the importance of healthy living. Leading by actions can also be a main motivation to obese students to engage in quality eating. Continuous reminder of the need to healthy living has been proven by research as a contributor of the reduction obesity (Dietz & Lee, 2004). Combining the three continuous reminder, good nutrition, and good physical activities the student will tend to be more aware and responsible of their health (Paxton, 2006).
Teachers can be of great help in fighting obesity through encouraging students, and creating awareness to young adolescents of the need of having physical activities. A teacher may give out assignments that require the students to establish various physical activities beneficial to them. By doing this, the students will get thinking on the ways they can involve themselves in the physical activities. Moreover, the teacher may go a step higher and ensure that the assignments are presented in class after some period of time, probably in a couple of months’ time.
Since this assignment will require referencing, the young people will be broadly exposed to many books and articles about physical activities. The teacher may go a step further by requiring the kids to keep journals of their activities of the day in relation to the physical activities. The journal entry would be recorded the activities that the students engage into, and for each month they would set a goal of what they plan to achieve in the next month. On the long run, the physical activities will increase and the students will enjoy incorporating physical activities in their day-to-day activities (Fiorentino, 2008).
A health teacher would be well suit in propelling the idea of avoiding obesity through taking time and focusing his attention on physical therapy. By doing this, he would be able to minimize obesity among the young adolescents in a big scale. Highlighting that endurance, flexibility and strength are needs of the body that can be easily achieved, would be a good start. Discussing the various physical activities available to them would be a second step in the fight against obesity, followed by asking them to do these activities for 10 minutes a day would be even a bigger boost towards instilling a sense of staying healthy to them (Koplan et al, 2005).
The teacher can also explain to them that the effect of doing these activities would affect the body. In later days, the students will get used to the teacher’s idea and even extend the amount of time they do the physical activities. Since it may not prove easy to some of them, the teacher may invite guest speakers to speak about physical activities. Finally, the teacher may demonstrate to them how to set achievable goals that focus on the physical activities. Moreover, helping them draw a progress chart of their progress on achieving the goals will also help them highlight more on achieving good health (Fiorentino, 2008).
Conclusion
Physical exercise is not the only way to fight out obesity, but observing one’s health is a big contributor of healthy leaving. Hence, teachers can go a step further to teach the children, as well as the parents the best nutrition for healthy leaving. This can be done by organizing meetings in schools or giving pamphlets to both the students and their parents. The pamphlets could highlight the quality food available to students as well as how to eat junk food and keep health, through doing adequate physical activities (Fiorentino, 2008). The fight against obesity should not only be left to teachers, the parents, and the community in general should also join hands and ensure that a health society is brought up, where physical exercises and watching of the diet are campaigned for.
References
Dietz, H., W. & Lee M., S, (2004). The role of school in preventing childhood abuse. New York: The State Education Standard.
Fiorentino, L, Castelli, M., (2008). Physical education technology playbook, Champaign: Human Kinetics.
Koplan, J., Liverman, C., & Kraak, V., (2005). Preventing childhood obesity: health in the balance. Washington D.C: National Academies Press.
McDevitt, T., Ormod, J., E, (2010). Child development and education. New Jersey: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.
Paxton, C., (2006). Childhood Obesity: The Future of Children. Princeton: Brookings Institution Press