A new physical education curriculum in Community Consolidated School District 93 has middle-school students working out their bodies and their minds. School officials are combining the historically separate health and physical education classes into one course, called physical development.

“As students are doing their physical education classes, physical education teachers will instruct them on healthy lifestyles and good choices with eating,” Superintendent William R. Shields said. “A teacher might say, ‘Let’s discuss how this (exercise) helps you develop.’”Previously, students only took six weeks of health class during each school year.

“Let’s say I was a seventh-grader and I had the six weeks of health in the beginning of the school year, and then the next year as an eighth-grader I didn’t have it until the end of the school year,” Shields said. “That’s almost two years a student hasn’t had health class. We wanted to combine it so it was every single day.”

The new program is in its infancy, school officials said, and tweaks are continuing to be made.

“It’s definitely a year of learning for us as well,” said Jill Meciej, director of curriculum and instruction. “Teachers are working it as they go and improving things.

After a soccer game last week, District 93 physical education teacher Sandy Lutz talked with students about how they can get the most benefits out of their physical education sessions.

“You need 12 to 20 minutes (of activity) to keep your heart rate up,” she told students Sept. 10. “If you run and stop that’s not helping the cardio as much as it should.”

Lutz is helping coordinate District 93’s new program.

Meciej said it’s important for physical education teachers to show students the connection between fitness and health.

“Students can learn, ‘If you want to work on cardiovascular, this isn’t going to do it for you but this would,’” she said. “Or, ‘If you want to be active in this particular sport, this is what the sport can help you do.’ The point is getting to know your own body and know activity-wise what to do. And every day, the students are getting health woven into fitness.”

Middle school physical education and health teachers worked during the 2009-10 school year with outside experts and District 93 leaders to develop units of study and assessments aligned to state standards for integrated physical development and health.

The new fitness curriculum includes warm-up and fitness activities, and addresses health topics such as reproduction and drug-use prevention.

Students also will discuss products that advertise weight loss.

“How do students view products someone’s advertising on TV — they’ll discuss, ‘Is this really viable or stretching the truth?’” Meciej said.

Shields said the new approach will provide long-term benefits to the students.

“It is the district’s goal that daily integration will place more emphasis, in words and actions, on a healthy lifestyle,” he said.