'New P.E.' Teacher Takes Students to the Max
Every Activity Stresses Cardiovascular Fitness

By Kevin V. Johnson
Special for USA TODAY
1/13/2003 page 7D
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20030113/4773184s.htm

NAPERVILLE, Ill. -- Physical education teacher Phil Lawler traces his breakthrough moment to the day in 1988 when he watched a 13-year-old girl doing a 12-minute run. Huffing and puffing, the girl was not in shape, and she walked more than she ran.

"She was what I'd call 'soft,' " Lawler remembers. But this time, he was recording the girl's heart rate with a $700 watch monitor. When he downloaded the data to a computer, he found that if her condition was soft, her effort was anything but. Her heart rate averaged 187 beats a minute. "That equaled a max effort from my best athletes," he says.

Lawler and his staff sat down on the gym floor and rethought every single activity for cardiovascular benefit. Since then, Lawler's "New P.E." program (the name was inspired by the once-popular New Math) has drawn national attention and praise. Officials from hospitals, fitness centers and other schools regularly troop here to Madison Junior High to observe Lawler's cardiovascular fitness programs.

Lawler's approach, says aerobics guru Kenneth Cooper, "is exactly what needs to happen if we are to have any hope of avoiding a medical disaster with this generation of kids."

Former student Nadine Youssef, 19, now a Northwestern University freshman, credits the approach with changing her attitude about exercise.

"I was never really in sports, or dedicated to athletics," she says. "But with the heart monitor, I knew I was working just as hard as the kids in track and gym who were running six-minute miles, even if they lapped me. I didn't dread going to gym, because I knew I wouldn't be embarrassed. And you always enjoy the things you succeed at."

The program, Youssef says, "definitely made me aware of the importance of being healthy and able to go the distance."

In the school's gymnasium, rows of heart-monitor watches and chest bands, 80 sets in all, hang like black stripes on the wall, ready to record the number of minutes each student spends in the "zone," the optimum cardiovascular pulse-rate range. Physical activities are tailored to helping students stay in that zone. Football, soccer, volleyball and basketball have all been modified to minimize standing-around time.

For example, "Navy" football, which has no scrimmage line or quarterback, limits teams to three to five people. The ball is advanced by throwing it to another teammate. Dropped balls go to the other team; tagged ball carriers must pass. Disputes are decided by a quick round of "rock, paper, scissors," so action is continuous.

Sports with too much downtime -- such as gymnastics, in which the ratio of kids watching to kids performing was too high -- have been eliminated, despite some complaints.

"Our standard is, we want to make you active," Lawler says. His new definition of an athlete: "Anybody who moves."

The son of a farmer, Lawler grew up in tiny Wall Lake, Iowa, where he lettered in football, basketball, track and baseball. He and two of his three brothers were in the starting lineup of the high school basketball squad. And one year, he and his brothers scored enough points to win the conference track meet by themselves.

In fact, Lawler became a P.E. teacher because he wanted to coach. Now, rather than focusing on winning and losing, he crusades to get everyone moving. "I guess I've seen the light," he says. And he practices what he preaches, spending 30 minutes in the zone on his treadmill each morning.

Lawler wheels and deals to get the equipment students need.

When P.E. money dried up, he argued that money for more heart monitors should come from the technology budget. Regular coffee klatches with parents helped lay the groundwork for donations when he needed $14,000 to build a rock-climbing wall.

He scoured classified ads for used weight machines. A local rehab and sports performance clinic loaned its personnel to operate muscle- and stress-testing machines so Lawler could create an annually updated fitness record for each student, showing muscle strength, cardiovascular condition and cholesterol levels.

Lawler is now looking for a corporation to finance a 10- to 20-year tracking study that will chart the long-term value of the New P.E. program.

He's "a very energetic person," says Jerry Virgo, who was principal of Madison until 1999. "He's sold on P.E. and has endless enthusiasm for what he's doing."

"This is a really important cause," says Lawler, 52, who travels extensively to speak at hospitals and health care companies about the approach used at Madison. He also is a director of PE4LIFE, an industry-financed non-profit that pays half his teaching salary and promotes more active physical education.

"Physical education teachers look at what they do, and say, 'What gives us value? Shouldn't we be able to make a difference?' " Lawler says. "Well, we're helping develop healthy lifestyles." An occasional look at the teachers named to the All-USA Teacher Team, USA TODAY's recognition program for outstanding teachers. For more information or to nominate a teacher for the 2003 team, visit allstars.usatoday.com.