RACINE, Wis. — Arno Tellier is a gym teacher at Olympia Brown Elementary School in Racine. He and his colleagues are always looking for new ways to get kids active. 

What You Need To Know

  • Racine Unified School District looks for ways to shake up their physical education classes

  • This year, they added a curriculum called DrumFIT

  • DrumFIT is a program that combines drumming and rhythm and turns it into cardiovascular exercise

Recently, he’s been teaching his second graders a style of exercise called “DrumFIT” 

“There’s two kinds of kids who like DrumFIT. There’s the kids who like the rhythm and the dancing and the moving around, then there’s the kids who just like to smash stuff and be loud,” Tellier said. “Either way, both kids are happy.” 

DrumFIT is a curriculum that uses music, rhythm and drumming, and turns it into cardiovascular exercise. It was started in 2006, but it’s new to Racine Unified School District. 

“This is our first year doing it, so it’s brand new to us, so we did it for about two weeks this year, and just had fun drumming and playing songs,” Tellier said. 

The students get big exercise balls that are held up in a large bucket, and a pair of drumsticks or pool noodle-type sticks, and play along to the beat of rock songs. 

During a recent gym class, they played along to songs like “We Will Rock You” and “We are the Champions” by Queen.

But second grader Kaiya Christian’s favorite song is “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor.

She said she likes when her class gets to do DrumFIT during gym class because it’s something different from sports. 

“I like that it’s very loud. It’s one of the funnest things in gym,” Christian said. 

That’s the whole reason why Tellier said the district looks at different activities students can do during gym class. He said it gets some students out of their shells. 

“Most of the kids who like to dance and the rhythm love it right away,” Tellier said. “The kids that are worried about dancing, or are in their shell, come out because they get to smash and they get to act a little bit crazy while they’re exercising.”

He said it also teaches the students a bit more than just a new way to be active. 

“[It teaches you] to keep your body under control. You’re learning the rhythm and the different dance moves, and they’re learning to dance when they might not even think about that they’re learning to dance,” Tellier said. 

The students in the class said they hope it sticks around for years to come so they can dance to the beat of their own kind of drum. 

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