Obesity-busting effort garners medal for Ill. school

(CBS/AP) How can schools help in the fight against childhood obesity? One small school in the American heartland has just won a gold medal for its fat-fighting program, which has five-year-olds dancing hip-hop to the alphabet, third-graders learning math by twisting their bodies into geometric shapes, and fifth-graders calculating calories.

PICTURES: Obesity-busting school wins medal for rigorous program

What else does Northeast Elementary Magnet School do to help kids keep the weight off? Everyone goes to the gym - every day. The cafeteria offers no soda, fried foods, or gooey desserts, sticking instead to fresh fruit and veggies and low-fat or no-fat milk. There are no sweets on kids' birthdays and food is never used as a reward. Teachers wear pedometers and parents have to sign a contract committing to the school's healthy approach.

The medal was awarded by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which was founded by the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation. Northeast is the first elementary school to win it.

Northeast isn't in some posh suburb. It's in Danville, Ill., an economically struggling city of 30,000 in farm country some 150 miles south of Chicago. But teachers, parents and students have embraced the rigorous program.

During a recent nutrition lesson, first-graders sat on the floor as a teacher read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," a classic kids' tale about a caterpillar that can't stop eating- all kinds of fruit at first. But when the bug moved on to chocolate cake and ice cream, the youngsters gasped and said in hushed tones, "junk food," as if it were poison.

"We're a healthy school," says 10-year-old Naomi Woods, a shy, slim fifth-grader. "We're not allowed to eat junk food or stuff like that."

Northeast kids aren't all skinny. Even some kindergartners are clearly overweight. But they still jump enthusiastically to the alphabet song. Chubby kids struggle to run around the football field during gym class, but there doesn't seem to be much grumbling.

The students mostly mirror Danville and surrounding Vermilion County -generally poorer, less healthy than the state average, with many families struggling with obesity and related problems.

The percentage of overweight kids at Northeast rose in 2009, the program's third year, but fell slightly last year, to 32 percent; 17 percent are obese. Those are similar to national figures, Principal Cheryl McIntire said. With only three years of data, it's too soon to call the slight dip in the percentage of overweight children a trend. But she considers it a promising sign, and there's no question that the children are learning healthy habits.

In a recent math class, fifth-grade teacher Lisa Unzicker explained how food labels can be misleading by listing calories per serving rather than per container. Pointing to an image of a pretzel bag label projected on a screen at the front of the classroom, she taught students to figure out how many calories are in a whole bag, based on the amount in each serving.

You have to be careful about potato chips and candy bars, she told the class. "This is why it pays to be a very conscious consumer."

Teachers and parents credit McIntire for the school's success. She joined Northeast in 2008, a year after the staff moved to adopt the healthy focus, and has made it her mission to instill that mantra.

McIntire literally "walks the walk." When students need a talking-to, she walks to their classrooms and escorts them to and from her office rather than just messaging for them. When it's her turn for recess duty, she walks with her pedometer around the school's big field instead of standing on the sidelines. She recalls a student recently calling out, "Hey, Mrs. McIntire, are you doing your steps?"

Tall, slender and a youthful 56, McIntire guides Northeast with a firm but loving hand. She greets students by name each morning, helps with untied shoelaces, and offers hugs. And she scolds kids who have messy uniforms or are rude to their classmates.

Shelbi Black says Northeast has had an "amazing, life-altering" influence on her kids, 10-year-old Kayla and Carter, 5. They've come home requesting fruits and vegetables they used to reject. Carter was thrilled to make frozen fruit shish kebobs in school, and Kayla "was so excited the other day because she made her goal in running the mile and she was so happy that she knocked down her time from last year," Black said.

The CDC has more on childhood obesity.