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Mustangs on the move

Mull Elementary School shares results of pilot program

Tracy Farnham | The News Herald

Mull Elementary School secretary Jennifer Bostian, left, walks with Melissa Leonhardt who is a teacher’s assistant with the Burke County Schools. Bostian uses the treadmill during school days, but has taken her routine outdoors during the summer months as part of the Mustangs in Motion.

By Tracy Farnham | The News Herald

Published: July 2, 2009

MORGANTON - The Mull Elementary School Mustang community embarked on a new program last fall aimed at targeting bad habits in eating and adding activity to sedentary lifestyles.
Mull set up a fitness room and implemented the 18-week Eat Smart Move More program.
It incorporated yoga and aerobics once a week to boost strength and flexibility for faculty members and once a month family nights with information, recipes and activities to get everyone, including teacher, students and their parents, moving.
Lisa Moore, health education supervisor and health promotion coordinator with the Burke County Health Department, used the TriFit system to gather data on volunteer participants of Mull's faculty.
This system recorded factors including age, height, weight and different types of activity to find body composition.
The ratio of muscle mass, the percentage of water in the body and blood pressure numbers were given. With these measurements the chronological age was compared to the actual body's age based on the assessment.
The overall body averages compared to the chronological age was 3 to 8 years older in these participants, Moore stated in an earlier interview.
Jill King, principal at Mull, become involved herself and encouraged the teachers to participate before or after school.
"I don't think I can ask the faculty to be a part of something that I'm not willing to do," King said.
King said she was motivated to decrease her age according to the TriFit assessment.
"I improved and I did decrease my age by two years. Everything improved," she said.
Second-grade teacher Eric Minetola participated in the program. After receiving his TriFit assessment, Minetola said, "I used these to set my goal. It was mostly motivational.
"I lost 80 pounds, but my wife and I started our weight loss in February of 2008 before this program started.
"We were very interested when we heard about the program, and we kind of nudged folks along when the program started."
Incorporating what he was already doing with the program, Minetola said, "I used the work-out guide they set and took their recommendations for cutting out more fat."
During the school year Minetola used the weight room to work out and during the summer he walks.
"I was not happy with the numbers earlier in the year, but with weight and strength training I was able to take six years off that," Minetola said.
"We are going to continue the program, and we are looking at things to do differently and a kickoff will be planned for the community next fall," King said.
The initial goal of the pilot program, Mustangs in Motion was to reduce the obesity rates in school-age children.
Each student's body mass index was calculated last fall with 16 percent of the kindergarten through second graders being found obese and 23 percent of third through fifth graders being found obese.
Students were challenged to include 60 minutes of physical activity per day including classroom energizers, PE and health, recess and participating in a BMI data base.
After compiling all of the students' BMI, eating and fitness suggestions were given to the families and a follow-up, end-of-the-year another assessment was recently taken.
The rest of the numbers will be in by September.
"We are in the data collection stage and compiling the data from this year's assessments and the students BMI's from the beginning until the end of the pro-gram," King said. A formal presentation will be presented to the Board of education in early fall 2009, she added.
While the workout room undergoes summer cleaning, the Mustang faculty is still in motion in and around the community.
"I have people going to Phifer Wellness Center and the Greenway keeping up their routine," King said.
Mustangs in Motion worked in conjunction with the Burke County School Health Advisory Council, as a program was implemented to help meet the health challenges faced by Burke County residents. The maximum end result is for these strategies to carry over into the general adult population, thus delivering a healthier Burke County.
King also sits on the advisory board for SHAC and said, "We are meeting as an executive board throughout the summer and plan on bringing the program to three more elementary schools this fall," she said.
It is the goal of SHAC to implement this pilot program into other elementary schools in the 2009-10 school year, King added.
On Monday evening Lisa Moore and Jill King gave a presentation at WPCC to the Appalachian Nursing Class about Mustang's in Motion. "We were speaking about what we experienced this year with this program," King said.