According to Jeff A. Johnson and Denita Dinger, “Play [physical activity] is not frivolous. It is not a luxury. It is not something to fit in after completing all the important stuff. It is the important stuff. Play is a drive, a need, a brain-building must-do.”
When a school district faces unfortunate circumstances such as the loss of their physical education (PE) teachers, one might see this as a setback, but not the University of California CalFresh Nutrition Education Program in the Butte Cluster, we saw this as an opportunity.
After deciding to discontinue the PE teachers at the Williams Unified School District, the district hired Craig Spence as the Director of Education for Teams Rise Together. Spence and the UC CalFresh Nutrition Education Program have been working together to establish a partnership and work towards developing a training and implementation plan for incorporating the CATCH curriculum into the elementary school and after-school programs so that all elementary school students will receive grade level appropriate programming from the CATCH curriculum.
CATCH is the Coordinated Approach to Child Health. The CATCH curriculum aims to create behavior changes by educating children on the importance of consuming healthy foods and increasing the amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity they engage in each day. For more information about CATCH, CLICK HERE.
The partnership between Spence and the UC CalFresh Nutrition Education Program was recently highlighted in Colusa County's local newspaper, the Colusa Sun Herald. To view this article, CLICK HERE.