Author: Brian Culp

50 Million Strong by 2029: Helping Immigrant and Refugee Youth Succeed in Physical Education

SHAPE America’s 50 Million Strong by 2029 commitment challenges each one of us to contribute to getting all of America’s children physically active, enthusiastic, and committed to making healthy lifestyle choices (SHAPE America, 2017). Of the approximately 50 million students presently attending America’s public schools, approximately 23 percent are estimated to be from immigrant and refugee backgrounds (Center for Immigration Studies, 2017). These young people face a myriad of challenges as they adapt to American culture. This includes navigating language, cultural barriers, stereotypes, along with negative attitudes regarding their residence and matriculation to the United States (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2017). With these students in mind, the following three considerations can help us meet our goal of improving the lives of all children regardless of race, gender, religion, or financial circumstances.


Get Educated
America, has a complex history regarding immigration and the treatment of immigrants. It’s a history that is politicized and routinely distorted (Culp, 2017). Data from the 2016 Current Population Survey (CPS) reported that immigrants and their U.S. born children number approximately 84.3 million people – nearly one-third percent of the overall U.S. population. Mexicans are the largest group of current immigrants in the country at 27%. Newer immigrants are largely represented from India (6%), China and the Philippines (5% each), El Salvador, Vietnam and Cuba (3% each), and the Dominican Republic, Korea, and Guatemala (2% each). Immigrants from these ten countries constitute roughly 60% of the U.S. immigration population. Other places of origin for immigrants in smaller percentages include Ireland (Northern Europe), France (Western Europe), Greece and Spain (Southern Europe), as well as Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and Bosnia (Eastern Europe).

Immigrants and refugees are often inaccurately perceived to be members of the same group. Generally, an immigrant is a non-native person who chooses permanent residence in a foreign country and has obtained the legal right to seek citizenship and take up employment. In contrast, a refugee is an individual who has been forced to flee his or her home country because of threat of war or persecution (United States Department of Homeland Security, 2017). Other designations include undocumented immigrants (who do not seek legal status for residency), asylees (people who meet the definition of a refugee and are already present in the United States not looking to return to their home country), and individuals who have been forcibly displaced (for reasons including population transfer, natural disaster, ethnic cleansing, deportation).

Read More

Better Together Than Apart

Two years ago, we contributed to a presentation at what was to be the last “AAHPERD” convention in St. Louis, Missouri with a group of colleagues from the Diversity and Inclusiveness Task Force of NASPE. The presentation, Innovative Teaching Practices in Physical Education for Diverse K-12 Schools, gave us an opportunity to present a segment entitled Cooperative Games That Embrace Diversity.

After the presentation and the great discussion with attendees that ensued, we decided to revisit what we presented this past fall at our respective schools in an adventure education skills and secondary methods course. The main themes from the lesson included the language of acceptance of all cultures, critical thinking, creating interactions, intervening on student remarks, and modeling behavior for students. With these tools in place, we led our classes through some transformational work that resulted in students having a better understanding of the concepts of inclusionary and exclusionary speech as well as appreciating differences in others to the betterment of the whole. Our session ended with the quote, “We’re better together than we are apart.”

It occurred to us that what we learned might make for a nice article as we head into another school year, particularly in light of the current political landscape that has served as a poor model for youth on how to discuss and accept differences. With this in mind, we would like to present a few examples of what we taught our students with some notes preceding the activities and how we facilitated them.

Read More

What’s in a Name?

Words can inspire a thousand pictures. Words have the potential to incite, divide, unite, create, and effect change. As a teacher educator, I often engage my students in discussions about the classroom environment and issues of safety and social growth. In recent months, I’ve started more than a few conversations regarding how to maintain the integrity of environments for activity and play, particularly as it relates to the topic of verbal pollution.

Verbal pollution refers to the use of words and comments that the majority agrees are offensive and damaging (Fisher, 2008). Today we frequently see these comments and values communicated through music, television, cyberspace and other forms of media and technology. Verbal pollution undermines the promotion of successful outcomes and has implication for our practices.

Through our upbringing many of us in our have been conditioned to ignore verbal pollution. If we don’t it gives the impression of weakness. Unconvinced? Consider one of the most frequently quoted English language idioms: “Sticks and Stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This rhyme, reported first in 1862, encourages a child victim of name-calling to ignore taunting, refrain from physical retaliation, and to remain calm and good-natured. But in today’s world, this well-intended phrase is both untrue and hypercritical.

Read More