Sunday, July 6, 2014

Teaching BMI

In physical and health education it is important for us to teach the students what being healthy means. One of the big things when doing this is talking to the students about what their body mass is and how it can affect them by either being to high or to low. In order to do this effectively we give them the tools to do it on their own so they may have a better understanding for its importance. 

There are a few different methods when teaching body mass and how to calculate it. One of the methods is the skin fold test. This test has been quite controversial over the years and here is why.When conducting this test you use calipers and pinch the skin from different areas of the body. These areas are the tricep, bicep, subscapula, and the top part of the hip also referred to as the suprailiac. Once you have pinched the area of skin you take the measurement found on the calipers and compare them with a conversion table to calculate your body fat percentage (link posted below). This test when conducted by a professional is can be quite accurate but when used in a school simply as a tool to show the student another way to determine their BMI can be harmful to a students. It can be embarrassing and uncomfortable if the students is not totally comfortable with being used in a demonstration or just doing it with the class at all.

 Some teachers feel that it is completely  fine to use this method during class as long as the student agrees to it whereas, other teachers feel that it is not worth the risk to physically demonstrate it when they could just show this through other teaching media such as YouTube, diagrams, and text. The risks that I mentioned are discomfort to the student along with the possibility of lawsuits. In the society we live in nowadays lawsuits are becoming more common and it is important that as teachers we keep ourselves safe as well as our students. It is unfortunate but when there are other ways to teach this method why not do what we can to make it the best experience for everyone. 

http://www.ptdirect.com/training-delivery/client-assessment/body-composition-testing/taking-skin-fold-body-fat-measurements\


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3 comments:

  1. Cassie CariveauJuly 6, 2014 at 6:29 PM

    I've always been interested in my personal BMI so this was a very interesting piece to read! I found it insightful to think of the different ways to teach it and more importantly how to appropriately teach it for everyone.

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  2. Andrea RichmondJuly 6, 2014 at 7:13 PM

    I would never have thought about teaching BMI as an issue in the education field until I read your post. As a teacher, I am sure picking the best way to teach this would be difficult in the society we live in where obesity is such a problem and people are so quick to judge others. I think your point about using students for demonstration only if they are comfortable and give their permission is so important. It's important to always make sure that students are comfortable in the classroom and this would definitely be a time when the teacher would have to take extra notice of that. Thank you for posting about this issue. It made me think about something I have never thought about before.

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  3. UnknownJuly 6, 2014 at 9:28 PM

    I think that the caliper method could be damaging to a student that already has issues with their body image. The teachers that are doing this, I'm assuming, would be doing his on kids that are entering high school and their bodies are changing and are self conscious already. I think that other methods should be used on kids.

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