Growing Accomplishments At Head O’ Meadow With A Tree Of Fitness

By Eliza Hallabeck

Steven “Coach” Dreger, the physical education teacher at Head O’ Meadow school, started an effort in 2004 to promote healthy lifestyle habits for students outside of the classroom.

At the start of the school year, students bring home packets of paper for their parents to read and sign. Among those are pages asking for parental involvement is the Tree of Fitness program.

A large piece of paper, with a tree-shaped Tree of Fitness image, hangs on one of the walls in the school’s gymnasium. As students bring their parent-signed progress reports in, Coach Dreger said he makes sure to acknowledge their accomplishment before the class, and each student writes his or her name on a leaf, which is then added to the Tree of Fitness.

“The response that we got was tremendous,” Dreger said.

Since the inception of Dreger’s Tree of Fitness program, he said there has been noticeable achievement differences on the yearly physical fitness tests.

Dreger awards prizes to students for reaching certain levels of the Tree of Fitness. Prizes range from pencils and T-shirts to having a lunch with the physical education teacher. He said not only are the students benefiting, but their parents are as well. Scores have improved at a steady rate, and parents have reported elevated levels of fitness and noticeable improvements in strength for both their children and themselves since the start of the program. On the school’s Spirit Day in the spring, students with enough leaves are given water balloons to throw at Dreger.

“Outside of the obvious benefits of fitness, strength gains in two of the modalities, upper body and abdominal strength, are two tested items that have grown since we started this program,” said Dreger, who has been teaching at Head O’ Meadow school since 1996.

“The ultimate goal of our district’s physical education is to create a mindset in the child for a healthy lifestyle,” he said, “and have them intrinsically motivated to do physical things and have physical happenings in their life outside of the classroom. Also, to move what they learn in the gym to their daily life.”

The idea for the Tree of Fitness program, which monitors a student’s at home physical activity, came to him after thinking about ways to increase their fitness levels for a while, he said.

“I have the kids twice a week for half-an-hour; it’s hard to make a dent in their lives that way,” Dreger said. “So I figured I had to get something they could bring home and do at home, and it kind of just came to me one day.”

As a child, he said, he and his friends were constantly outside, in the woods, playing Hide and Seek, and tree climbing.

“Consequently, we were all in pretty good shape,” Dreger said. “We used to get out of school, change into our play clothes and then play until our parents called us in for dinner. We’d come in sweaty, breathing hard, exhausted every day. We played sports everyday. I mean, I don’t know how much of that goes on. I hope a lot.”

He said that while Newtown has a Parks & Recreation Department that offers exercise and fitness programs, he is not sure exactly how much activity students do each day.

When students come into class, the first thing Dreger does is go over progress sheets the students bring in.

“There are so many parenthetical benefits that are too numerous to mention, and they are not tangible,” he said.

Dreger said the Tree of Fitness program was primarily created to help students’ overall improvement on the yearly administered Connecticut State Physical Fitness Battery Assessment.

“I’m in a good position to instill that kind of belief system in their heads, just because of the nature of what I do,” he said. “Everybody’s got to do something. Obesity is the scourge of our times.”

The main aspect of the program pushes students toward having a healthy lifestyle. Dreger said in order to do that, the students need to be excited about the process.

“Those scores are sent to the governor, and she checks them and sees how we are doing,” he said. “Just like reading scores, we are judged on how our students perform on those tests. I only have them an hour each week. So, how am I going to make a difference? I need to have more hands-on, I need to get inside their homes and have them start being physical in their homes, or on the playgrounds, in their yards and on the weekends. It’s worked for me.”

The letter sent home with students to their parents regarding the Tree of Fitness program at Head O’ Meadow School described the existing test at the school. The test measures four components of fitness for third and fourth grade students.

“Although our school scores are about average,” the letter from Dreger reads, “we believe we, as a school, could and should improve in all areas of testing.”

To help improvement on the test, Dreger developed the at home program to addresses two of the four components the students are tested on in school.

“The program requires very little time,” said Dreger in the letter, “yet, if pursued diligently, will yield outstanding results. Parents will be asked to monitor students during brief exercise periods and record their performance on progress sheets, which will be provided to the household.”

Parents are asked to sign and return the progress sheets to the school, where Dreger overseas the students filling out those paper leafs, which are then placed on the Tree of Fitness in the school’s gymnasium to feature the student’s name.

 In an information packet sent home to parents about the program, Dreger asked parents to do their best to help make the program a fun endeavor.

“Your enthusiasm toward their accomplishments and success will bestow upon them the importance of physical fitness in their everyday life,” he wrote in the information packet. “You may also implement your own reward system to promote even more excitement. You may also want to challenge your child by agreeing to complete as many repetitions as your child. You and your child can trade roles enabling your child to become the evaluator, thus reinforcing and strengthening your child’s understanding of correct form and body alignment.”

Dreger said he has been teaching for 20 years, is a certified diver, and ice hockey official and fitness instructor. He is also involved in Relay For Life.

(If you have or know of a teacher in the district who has implemented an interesting outside of the classroom activity that furthers students in any way, and think that program should be featured, contact Eliza Hallabeck at eliza@thebee.com.)