SHAPE America in the News

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Maine DOE Newsroom

Mountain Valley High School Health Teacher Kristen Allen Named 2025 SHAPE America Eastern District Health Teacher of the Year

On December 16, 2024, the Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE America) announced that Mountain Valley High School Health Education Teacher Kristen Allen was selected as the Eastern District Health Teacher of the Year. Kristen has taught health education at Mountain Valley High School in Rumford for more than 18 years.

Singletracks

Mountain biking by the book: MTB might just be the perfect physical activity

Looking over my own kids’ standards-based curriculum recently, I came across this nugget from Shape America and the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE):

“The physically literate individual recognizes the value of physical activity for health, enjoyment, challenge, self-expression and/or social interaction.”

Personally, I can’t think of another sport that delivers all five of these benefits in a single activity the way mountain biking does.

NEA

How Students Literally ‘Work Out’ Behavior Problems

The weight room and boxing programs build on what Pike and Shappell do in their PE classes. Both are members of the Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE) America.

Quality PE programs, according to SHAPE’s standards, promote positive personal and social behaviors, teaching students how to effectively communicate and resolve conflict. Kids learn to take turns, or agree on the rules of a game, for example.

Education Week

Traumatic Brain Injuries Are More Common Than You Think. Here’s What to Know

But return-to-school protocols are harder to come by. The Society of Health and Physical Educators, or SHAPE America, has reported that at least a dozen states have concussion laws on the books with language about injured students resuming normal academic activities.

SUNY Cortland

Alumni gift creates civic engagement endowment

Kratz left a noticeable mark at Cortland. She was one of two Cortland students — and just eight in New York state — named a Major of the Year by the Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE).

The News-Herald

SHAPE America to host national convention in Cleveland

“It’s the largest gathering of health educators and physical educators in the country,” she added. “We really try to sort of travel the country to be able to offer the opportunity for high-quality professional development, networking, connections to exhibitors, vendors in the field and things like that.”

Education Week

Unsafe Health Claims Dominate Social Media. Health Class Can Give Students Vetting Tools

The Society for Physical Education and Health Education’s new K-12 standards, set to be released in March, include strands focused on media literacy and analyzing health influences.

The standards are aimed at “trying to help students be able to figure out not only if the sources are valid, but also figure out how to confirm information that you’re reading,” Benes said. “It’s exploring all the elements that you need in order to be able to identify a potentially not-reliable source of information, to look critically at what you’re reading and determine the extent to which the claims being made are accurate or truthful.”

Education Week

Teaching About Grief and Loss: One State’s New Requirement for Schools

While the Society of Health and Physical Educators, the professional organization for health educators, doesn’t specifically include grief in its model standards, the group hopes the skills-based approach to identifying and managing emotions it recommends will help students learn to cope, said Sarah Benes, the organization’s president.

“By focusing on skills, it supports transfer across a range of emotions and building the toolbox students can access when managing difficult situations, including grief,” she said.

The Lund Report

Schools weigh priorities when tackling substance use prevention

Sarah Benes, the president of the Society of Health and Physical Educators, said the extremely limited time educators are able to spend teaching health is a national problem.

She thinks that the social and environmental factors that drive drug use play a bigger role in kids’ decisions to use than health education could. That said, she also thinks better and more health education has enormous potential to give kids the tools they need to do a good job navigating difficult choices about exercise, nutrition, sex and drugs, among other topics.