"Get Smart. Get Active."
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The Get Smart. Get Active tour will consist of a self-supported bike ride, completed by Tyler Duncan, from Victoria, British Columbia to St. John’s, Newfoundland. While crossing the country Tyler aims to talk to students, teachers, administrators, and parents, to help raise awareness about the need for quality daily physical education and daily physical activity in children’s lives. The tour will also aim to raise $100,000 for charities involved in the advocacy of physical activity and education.
Our MessageThe Get Smart. Get Active. tour plans to use strategies employed by some of Canada’s most inspirational people; such as Terry Fox and Rick Hansen, to raise awareness about physical education and daily activity in Canada. Get Smart. Get Active. will focus on four main areas affecting the health and wellbeing of today’s youth.
• Get Smart. Get Active: There is an ever-growing amount of research showing that even small amounts of moderate activity every day can go great distances in improving our health and wellbeing. This is especially true for children because exercise is so important for proper development of the muscular-skeletal system and basic motor patterns. Research shows that kids need at least one hour of moderate activity every day to promote proper development and yet students today are more sedentary than ever before. Get Smart. Get Active. plans to show students, parents, and communities the need for children to be active and for students to be educated in ways that will create active lifestyles.• Get Active. Get Smart: One of the most disturbing trends in schools today is a willingness to cut physical education and activity time in favor of more academics. Every year schools are pressed for time and money and look to programs such as art and physical education as expendable subjects. This is a very disturbing trend considering that countless studies have shown that students who are more active perform better in academic subjects. Furthermore, recent research has shown that activity is necessary for the proper development of neural pathways much in the same ways as it is key to the body’s development. The Get Smart. Get Active. tour will highlight the importance of physical activity, with physical education playing a vital role in the academic performance of our students. We will talk to students, and teachers about what they would like to see in physical education programs and how those programs might be better integrated into every curriculum.
• Get Engaged. Stay Active: One of the most important features of this event is ensuing community engagement. The key benefit to completing this tour on a bike is that Tyler will be more approachable to the people we meet. Bike touring encourages interaction on a more personal level by traveling through communities at a slower pace. In today’s society there is so much fear and worry about children getting hurt or sick while playing outside; the days of pick-up street hockey games and parks filled with children have been forgotten in favor of video games and television. The Get Smart. Get Active. tour will enter neighbourhoods and talk about what can be done to become more engaged as a community. Ideas such as holding public barbeques in parks or community centers, having a schedule of volunteer parents or community members that can supervise children playing pick-up games in the park or street, or opening neighbourhood gyms and pools for children to have a safe place to get involved.
• Get Educated. Live Better: Finally, the Get Smart. Get Active. tour will address the importance of quality daily physical education, developing students that will look upon healthy, active lifestyles as enjoyable. Quality daily physical education includes everything from skill and strategy of games, to proper nutrition, and to sportsmanship and respect of the self, community, and nature. Good physical education programs can give students the skills they need to play on their own time as well as enable them to make good decisions concerning nutrition, drugs, and alcohol. The Get Smart. Get Active. tour hopes to create confidence and life skills that will help students in all areas of their lives.
For more information about the message Get Smart. Get Active. plans to support and the research supporting our opinions please visit the Canadian Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance at www.cahperd.ca, and the Canadian Obesity Network at www.obesitynetwork.ca.