Engage principals as champions in order to build administrative buy-in

A story from Utah

When we spoke to Jenny Grosh, PE Specialist for Granite School District, and Tera Olsen, Health and PE Specialist for Cache School District, both identified “time” as the greatest perceived barrier for classroom teachers when thinking about implementing classroom physical activity.

“Classroom teachers have so many other hoops they have to jump through; they think this is just one more thing they have to do.”

Tera Olsen

For Ms. Grosh and Ms. Olsen, the solution to this barrier is administrative buy-in.

“When I get a principal’s buy in…that’s when you see [classroom physical activity] done the best in schools. You get the principal buy-in first and then they push it out to teachers.”

Jenny Grosh

Key Takeaways

Find the low-hanging fruit – principals who are already interested in physical activity. Some principals are poised to be champions; engage them early and often to leverage their buy-in to spread the word to other schools and demonstrate successful approaches. As Ms. Olsen observed, “The principals who have [physical activity] as a priority [in their lives] want to use it in their schools.” By identifying those potential champions, it may be much easier to get them on board as advocates for physical activity in their schools.

Meet principals where they are. Ms. Olsen has a specific strategy for engaging principals: “Every year I go to the Principals Meeting and talk about [Comprehensive School Physical Activity Programs (CSPAP)] and the benefits and why it will help out schools. From that, I get a few more principals who agree [that CSPAP should be a priority].”

Principals are a key group of stakeholders who can become advocates and champions for classroom physical activity. As Ms. Olsen observed, “Most principals agree in the first place [that physical activity is important]. It’s [a matter of if] in the long run if they push it [as a priority].”