Hill reports to school board on health, PE

Shannon Hill serves as the physical education, health and wellness teacher for Hot Springs County High School, and Nov. 15 saw her address the Hot Springs County School Board about the Wyoming Association for ​Health, Physical Education, Recreation ​and Dance, of which she’s been a member for three years, having presented at its conferences and taken on a leadership role within the organization.

Hill also spoke about her role in the Wyoming Department of Education’s Level Up Leadership Program, to which she was invited after winning a Milken Educator Award.

During the prior weekend’s convention in Lander, Hill transitioned from president-elect to president of WAHPERD, and noted that Hot Springs County School District Superintendent Dustin Hunt has sat in on Zoom calls during which “we got to talk with (University of Wyoming) students, and prepare them for coming out of college, and what to expect when you’re being interviewed.”

The week leading up to the school board meeting had included both WAHPERD and Level Up meetings, and during the former, Hill and other health and PE teachers discussed the state standards they’d spent the past two years rewriting, only for them to be rejected by the state Board of Education.

Ryan Fuhrman, principal of Tongue River Elementary, spoke to Hill’s Level Up meeting as a member of the state Board of Education, explaining that WAHPERD’s proposed standards were rejected because it was among the first to submit standards to the board under the new submission process.

Hill expressed concerns that health and PE courses are being deprioritized in Wyoming schools, because not everyone recognizes the importance of reinforcing those subjects among students.

“Our concern is that (the state board is) really going to pare down health and PE, especially health,” Hill said. “Health gets put on the back burner in the elementary level a lot.”

Hill was able to speak as a voice for the health and PE teachers as a whole, and Fuhrman assured her that he also sees those subjects as important.

Hill told Fuhrman that “we need to be a part of this process,” with which he also concurred, and Hill expressed enthusiasm to the Hot Springs County School Board over the “really cool connection” with which her memberships in both WAHPERD and Level Up had provided her.

“I’m very passionate about what we teach,” Hill said. “They’re sending me to the national conference this summer, then I get to host the whole convention right after volleyball season next year, so that should be interesting.”

She added, “It’s exciting, but I’m a little bit nervous about all the things.”

As “a former health and PE person myself,” Hunt expressed his appreciation to Hill for “engaging me, as a superintendent, on how we might help better prepare educators that are coming out of school,” and credited Hill with helping to shape the roles of health and PE teachers statewide.