What It Is
In a recent year, about 1 million students signed up for the American Heart Association’s Kids Heart Challenge and its middle- and high-school version, the American Heart Challenge. Schools register, students get active with jump rope, basketball, dance, or obstacle courses, and participants raise donations for the American Heart Association. PE teacher Jean Barkow started it in March 1978 as a “Jump-Rope-A-Thon” at Riverside University High School in Milwaukee. Long known as Jump Rope for Heart, the program became the Kids Heart Challenge in 2018, and today it also teaches heart health and lifesaving skills like Hands-Only CPR.
Why It Matters
By 2014, more than 28,000 schools had taken part, raising more than $700 million. Soon after Barkow’s first event, the American Heart Association and the national PE teachers’ organization, now called SHAPE America, turned it into a national program. It shows how one PE teacher’s idea can get kids across the country moving while they learn about heart health. In 2014, Riverside University High School named its gym the Jean Barkow Gymnasium.
