Remember when a family member or friend excitedly shouted, “Kodak Moment!” They’d whip out a camera, quickly gather people together and cement a memory of the occasion on film. It’s not uncommon to hear the same expression today but in an entirely different context.

Kodak has a fascinating history. It was back in 1888, when chemist George Eastman flipped the world of photography. His invention of consumer cameras and roll film transformed photo taking from a small, complicated, specialized profession to a hobby for everyone. Eastman and the Rochester NY company he created, successfully dominated the world of photography for close to a century.

But then something unanticipated happened. In 1973, Kodak hired Steven Sasson a bright, young 24-year old engineer. Uncertain how best to use his talents they offered him a couple of options. Sasson chose to investigate a newly emerging technology that promised to transform electrical signals into images. Two years later, he proudly demonstrated his creation in front of Kodak’s bosses: The world’s very first digital camera. Sasson predicted that digital photography would within about 20 years replace traditional cameras, film, and prints.

Writing this the day after Xmas, I can’t help but think about the past year and imagine what’s ahead. Most of us I suspect do the same every year. We think about the joy and sadness we’ve experienced in our jobs and family in the year just ending, and wonder what awaits us in the New Year.

For health educators and physical educators, 2015 ended on an upbeat note. After more than a decade outside of the “core” curriculum, we were included as part of a “well rounded education” in the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act(ESSA). Its predecessor, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) sadly resulted in not only leaving academically behind millions of students, but also health and physical education.

NCLB although well intentioned, justified school administrators making program and position cuts to our subjects in the name of academic accountability. Noticeably no one’s celebrating much about the success of this focus, while the evidence is clear that the majority of young people fail to lead physically active and healthy lives.

Having been in teacher education for almost three decades, I confess to a level of cynicism when it comes to university-based professional prep programs. Publicly, we’re challenged keep improving the quality of the next generation of teachers, yet simultaneously handicapped with expectations to meet rules and regulations almost guaranteed to ensure failure. It’s sort of a “we want you to do a better job, but you have to do it this way rather than a different way that would make more sense.”

Not long ago, I read about a state legislator’s effort to address the growing teacher shortage by creating alternative pathways to certification. I scowled. Even assuming admirable intentions, for those of us who’ve spent years actually struggling to prepare teachers, it’s a dumb idea. Sure, we can solve the teacher shortage problem this way. What could be easier? Just lower the standards for becoming a teacher. Set the bar at perhaps graduating from high school and teaching’s going to attract those otherwise destined for minimum wage jobs. There’ll be no teacher shortage. Problem solved. What’s next? Maybe it’s time to run for Congress or become a Presidential candidate?

Just as obesity is merely a symptom of inactivity and poor lifestyle choices, the teacher shortage has a lot more to do with unattractive salaries, stressful work conditions, little support, and frustrating bureaucratic interference. There’s no shortage of people interested in teaching careers. The problem is that we lose most of them in the first few years of their careers when they discover teaching’s a lot harder than it looks, support isn’t there when it’s needed, and too frequently our professional programs haven’t done a good job preparing new teachers with the skills they need to succeed and flourish.

Got your attention? Okay, the topic sounds kinda scary but read on to get what I mean. If you’ve followed SHAPE America’s news you’ll know about the “50 Million Strong by 2029” target. To recap, our national professional society has set the goal of getting every student attending America’s preK-12 schools physically active and healthy by the time they graduate in 14 years. It’s a pretty bold and maybe in some minds crazy goal. Imagine, every student – about 50 million of them – living healthy lives that embrace regular physical activity. That’s a heck of a long way from where we are today.

Of course it’s not hard to imagine some of our students getting there. You know, the ones already pretty active, got the good genes, whose parents encourage them to play sports, who weren’t born with any kind of disability. Those ones. But what about the rest? The kids – and there are far too many of them – whose childhood is a constant struggle: Difficult living conditions, abuse, poverty, hunger, and little encouragement to take school or learning seriously. How on earth are we going to get those kids to choose to be physically active and to make healthy lifestyle choices in the daily chaotic world in which they live? Wish I knew. But what I do know is that all of us need to get together to solve this challenge because the alternative is going to be disastrous for us personally and nationally.

It’s not just a physical education challenge helping to prepare America’s youth for successful lives. But we need to do our part. And that’s why physical education as we know it has to change. It’s not that any of us haven’t been trying. We have. If anything the problem is that we have been guilty of trying to do too much. We all know that movement is a wonderful medium for learning and personal development. Math, reading, writing, art, pretty much anything can be effectively learned through movement. Play, games, dance, sports are among the most effective ways to develop social, emotional, intellectual, ethical, and physical skills. Not much argument here. But the problem is physical educators can’t do all this alone. We’ve tried and it just doesn’t work. It’s not hard to understand. We simply don’t have enough time.