Health and Physical Education

Health Education and Physical Education are integral parts of the total education of every child from kindergarten through grade 12. Therefore, every student should have the opportunity to participate in a quality health and physical education program.

It is the role of quality health education programs to provide young people with the knowledge and skills they need to become successful learners and healthy and productive adults. To help students adopt and maintain healthy behaviors, health education should contribute directly to a student’s ability to successfully practice behaviors which protect and promote health and avoid or reduce health risks.

It is the role of quality physical education programs to help students develop health-related fitness, physical competence in movement activities, cognitive understanding, and positive attitudes toward physical activity so that they can adopt healthy and physically active lifestyles. Quality programs are also important because they provide learning experiences that meet a student’s developmental needs, which in turn helps to improve the mental alertness, academic performance, readiness, and enthusiasm for learning.

Good health and academic success are directly related. Healthy children are better students and better students become healthy, successful, productive adults.