Healthy Moves Trainer-in-Residence

This brings movement, fitness and fun to elementary students through a nine-week trainer-in-residence program. Due to school budget cuts in the area, many physical education programs have been eliminated, which leaves classroom teachers, many of whom have no specialized PE training, to lead PE classes.

Healthy Moves fills the gap by working with teachers and their students to demonstrate fitness activities and provide a model that the teacher can use for PE classes. Healthy Moves provides fitness formats that can be used by any teachers of grades one through five. The approach reduces the teacher’s planning time for physical education, and it provides students with fitness activities that they enjoy and skills that they can use in and out of the classroom.

The students also develop the physical skills that are required in state teaching standards, and these activities help students toward the 60 minutes-a-day of active play with elevated heart rates that are recommended by the American Medical Association.

The Trainers: Healthy Moves’ trainers are community fitness instructors who come from a range of physical activity backgrounds: certified and licensed fitness trainers and consultants, athletic trainers, retired PE teachers, former coaches or athletes, community recreation instructors, and University of Oregon students from the Human Physiology department. Trainers are recruited and screened by the Healthy Moves director and board members. Prospective trainers complete an application, interview for inclusion in the program, complete school district volunteer forms, pass the criminal background checks required by the schools, and meet with the Healthy Moves director and the teachers prior to the start of the nine-week program