Active Kids, Active Minds | Kathleen Tullie | TEDxNatick

[Music] so we have a problem we have a major problem it's bigger than an epidemic it's a pandemic and it's that we don't move anymore as modern society has evolved physical activity has been engineered out of our everyday lives whether it's transportation we drive everywhere schools we prioritize academics over physical and mental health or electronics we are on our phones 24/7 it's like digital heroin and the increase of prescription drugs physical inactivity is now the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality it kills more people than smoking 5.3 million people per year sitting is the

new smoking and sadly right now it is projected that our children's life expectancy is going to be shorter than ours that's not right we've created this we have to change this so we know that exercise is medicine we know that the minute we start to move neurogenesis happens we start to release wonderful neurotransmitters serotonin dopamine Naropa nephron that allow lots of wonderful things to happen to us it helps our confidence it helps depression it helps anxiety and I'm gonna prove it to you because we have to walk the walk right so before I tell you

my story I'm actually going to ask you to stand up if you can't stand up you can stay in your seat so I love this this is like a large PE class so can we just do this for all eight minutes I think I'd get kicked off stage so so what we're gonna do is to bodice which is 20 seconds on 10 seconds off it's one of the most efficient ways to exercise you could just squat setups whatever it for us we're gonna do fast feet today typically you do 8 rounds but we don't have

that much time so I'm gonna spare you and we're only going to do two rounds 20 seconds on 10 seconds off and we're gonna do fast feet okay so ready 20 seconds on your mark get set go I'm looking at the clock and I know that those neurotransmitters are getting released I know endorphins are being released come on wave your hands high-five your neighbor all right 20 seconds stop okay note sit down just yet but look at I actually see lots of giggles I see lots of smiles so you can exercise anywhere you can exercise

when you're cooking that your dust anything all right ready another 20 seconds faster faster air and I see you a high five rich all right come on Eric I turn around in your seat I kept on thinking you gotta go faster all right you can stop now you can sit if is that to me we do that the whole 10 minutes raise your hand if you have a smile on your face and you feel more alert now I don't see any unraised hands if I do you should get up and move more so now I

will tell you my story so in 2008 after 18 years in a corporate real estate career I had a cancer scare I had two young kids at home so I decided I was going to be a stay-at-home mom that stay-at-home stint it lasted for about two maybe three weeks I just had ants in my pants and I came across dr. Rainey's book dr. ray DS professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who talks about the profound impact that exercise has on all of us that if you exercise for 15 to 20 minutes it's like taking

a little prozac or Ritalin and I thought well if we know that and the science is there why are we not letting kids run around before or during school sadly we've taken PE away Pete most schools have peed once maybe twice a week and we even take away recess at some points and we make them sit for six to eight hours and not only do we have an obesity epidemic even worse we have a mental health crisis our mental health crisis is so bad right now that one in five children suffer from some debilitating mental

health issue and we know movement would make them happier so with this knowledge and with a little passion and determination because I just have a little and some parent volunteers I went to our local principal and superintendent and asked for permission to run a before school physical activity program because we knew they'd do better in school we got their blessing we sent an email out to the entire school population said if you want to drop your kids off an hour before school to run around and play evidence shows they'll be happier and healthier we had

80 kids sign up in two weeks I had no idea what I was doing so I said to some of my friends what are we gonna do put some whistles on her next run around and play so of course we had 80 kids it was free daycare and it was a healthy free daycare and parents could get to work early so we had kids dropped off and we were running around complain and then within a couple weeks the emails we were getting from parents and teachers were unbelievable like my kids are so excited now to

go to school even early and they're sleeping better the teachers are reporting they actually can focus in class and then what I call word of mom started to spread and other communities reached out to us for a copy of our curriculum and that's when I had the aha moment that maybe we're onto something here and maybe we need to create a curriculum that allows parents teachers community members to be part of this solution part of the physical inactivity solution so we created a curriculum we called it box which was 45 minutes a day right before

school three days a week it included functional fitness movements relay races obstacle courses 400 meter runs and nutrition and at the time my hope was you know what if this is a big success here maybe we can use it in the four other schools in the district and even use it in you know surrounding neighborhoods little did I know that you'd fast forward to 2017 were well beyond the five schools we're in 2230 schools I gotta I can't be get emotional today okay so this is because it's needed it's necessary we see it we have

the scientific evidence and the personal stories the scientific evidence right we had NIOSH National Institute on out-of-school time track 560 kids that were in box it showed that after participating in box their working memory and their executive functioning significantly increased so kids need to move they also improve their running time and new nutritional knowledge and then we in a separate study we surveyed 2,000 children in inner-city schools and asked them if they wanted to come back to the second session a box so a second 12-week session come an hour before school and exercise do you

know what percent wanted to come back 90 percent okay guys 90 percent of kids want to come an hour before school and exercise it's their right it's our responsibility to give this to them and even more so it's the personal stories that really motivate me and those of us around that keep us going so Suzie a little girl the first few the first year of our program her mother called me and said Suzy's not a jock she doesn't like to participate in sports she spends she visits the school nurse almost every day my father my

husband and I are going through a divorce and she's having a rough time and she's overweight so drop her off we'll get her to love it first few weeks Suzy didn't participate couldn't run the 400 meters was not happy within a few weeks Suzy was running the 400 meters with a huge smile on her face the school nurse was reporting that she no longer visited the nurse's office her mom was telling me for the first time in months she was sleeping through the night and excited to go go to school and she had a whole

new confidence to her so here we gave a child who probably would have never thought of herself as a jack we gave her confidence and then another example it's Jess so jess that's a trainer so the cool side effect of box has been empowering everyday people to be champions of change jess is just like me an ordinary person but she's doing extraordinary things and this is a quote from Jess so when I was first told about her program and somebody told me to go visit her program they said wait to see Jess she's unbelievable trainer

she's got 50 kids moving she's so inspiring so in my mind I thought I was going to show up and see this really buff trainer I walked through the door and I see Jess 250 plus pounds and I think what and then shame on me she put me to shame she ran that 400 meters with those kids with huge smiles on their face and had them completely inspired so see it doesn't take somebody who's a superhero and I'll tell you the sportiness of good answers industry will tell you that they have partially failed to they

have created this idea of superheroes and athletes we've created in this country a culture of spectators we have to reverse that we have to create a culture of participants and there's no better way than to start with our youth we know that youth learn habits by AJ so it's critical that we allow them and give them the opportunities to move just like other major revolutions the seatbelt campaign the smoking campaign it started with the kids the good news is we had success with both and I believe we can have success with this - we know

the sport and fitness has the power to change lives we can do it together I'm asking you to join the fitness revolution don'ts estill let's revolutionize our kids lives and bring Fitness back to schools and home life thank you [Applause] [Music] you