1. Carolina Country JUNE 2007 17
T
he adage “your body is a temple” motivates Barnanne
Creech when she teaches her students at Zebulon
Middle School to take care of their bodies. She believes
that if our bodies are physically healthy, we can live produc-
tive, fulfilling lives mentally and emotionally.
Since 2000 Creech has taught physical education and
health at Zebulon Middle School to more than 300 students.
In addition to learning about the life-long benefits of exer-
cise, her students try to maintain a healthy weight and eat a
balanced diet.
Creech blends what students learn in other classes into
her physical education class. “Anything I can do to improve
reading, writing, and math skills in physical education is
what we need, because that’s how students get better,” she
says,“You’ve got to be able to use those skills everywhere in
order to be successful in life.”
Wake Electric Membership Corporation recently helped
Creech raise awareness about physical health by awarding
her a Bright Ideas grant for “2X2=PE4ME,” a project that
links physical education and math. Students spread floor
mats that are numbered 1 to 9. In the warm-up and cool-
down sessions, Creech calls out math problems, and her stu-
dents step on the mat’s corresponding answers. A DVD also
features an aerobics instructor calling out number sequences
for the students to move to.
Wake EMC has awarded Barnanne Creech Bright Ideas
grants in the past for her innovative projects. One involved
using heart-rate monitors to show students that the heart is
a muscle that becomes stronger with physical activity. The
students monitored their heart rate after completing different
activities, and then calculated the difference between the activ-
ities to determine which activity was more intensive. Another
project involved “cup-stacking,” a popular activity requir-
ing stacking drinking cups into intricate patterns alternating
between left and right hands. The idea was to strengthen con-
nections between the right and left side of the brain.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy, she taught her students
life-saving skills and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
Some of her middle school CPR students are now working
as summer lifeguards.“It’s great to see all of the dots con-
necting,” she says.
Creech is working on assessing how effective her physi-
cal education classes are with a “Polar TriFit” machine.
Beginning with sixth graders, she monitors each student’s
weight, height, body mass index, blood pressure and choles-
terol. As the students progress to seventh and eight grades,
she will track their measurements to help determine the
strengths and weaknesses of her physical education classes.
It’s no surprise that Barnanne Creech has combined her
passion for physical fitness education with teaching. Her
mother taught at Zebulon Elementary School for more than
30 years, and her grandmother taught middle school in
Corinth, N.C.“Teaching is definitely in our blood,” she says.
The Bright Ideas grant program, sponsored by North
Carolina’s electric cooperatives, strives to improve education
in North Carolina classrooms by awarding grants to teachers
for innovative, classroom-based projects in grades K–12 that
would not otherwise be funded. Since it began in 1994, the
Bright Ideas program has awarded more than $4.5 million
in grant money to teachers across the state. More than 4,000
projects have been sponsored and used to enhance the edu-
cation of approximately 800,000 students.
Bright Ideas grants are available in all subjects to North
Carolina teachers in grades K–12. Grants are awarded each
school year and fund up to $2,000. Teachers are limited to
one grant proposal per year and are eligible even if they have
received a grant the year before. Online applications are
available at www.ncbrightideas.com
Teachers who submit applications by the end of August,
approximately a month before the September deadline,
have a chance of winning a digital camera. For more
information on Bright Ideas contact your electric cooper-
ative or Tonya Howard at (800) 662-8835, extension 3081
or tonya.howard@ncemcs.com. c
help middle school students learn math and stay healthy
Text and photo by Ashley-Harrington Andrews
Bright Ideas
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