Spring Brook Elementary teacher channels personal loss into heart-healthy mission

Spring Brook Elementary teacher channels personal loss into heart-healthy mission

Rich Vine has hardly missed a day of running.

The physical education teacher at Naperville’s Spring Brook Elementary School has seen first hand the effects of poor lifestyle and health choices. When Vine was a 19-year-old college freshman, his father had a heart attack. Two years later, when Vine was studying cardiac rehabilitation, he suspected his father had heart failure.

“With that heart attack, I’m sitting there looking at all of his paperwork and everything like that, looking at his EKGs … I go, ‘Dad, you have heart failure,’” Vine said. “And my father’s like, ‘No, I don’t. … That’s not what my doctors have told me.’”

Vine’s father was 55 years old when he suffered his first heart attack, but it was not until he was 65 that he would be properly diagnosed with heart failure. About two years after that diagnosis, his father died.

Now, Vine leads Spring Brook’s Kids Heart Challenge, a program introduced by the American Heart Association. Every year, the school participates in the fundraising effort and educational program, which provides the tools and lessons to teach kids and their families about physical and mental well-being, particularly as it pertains to heart health.

For Vine, the opportunity to discuss and teach heart health to students “hits home.”

The challenge originated 48 years ago as the American Heart Association’s Jump Rope for Heart challenge, a fundraiser that taught kids the importance of heart health through jump roping. In 2018, Jump Rope for Heart rebranded as Kids Heart Challenge to include other components such as mental health and wellness.

Now, the heart association partners with 15,000 schools nationwide on the event, according to Jen Rogers, AHA region vice president of development, school engagement.

When it comes to fundraising and engaging students, Spring Brook stands out as one of the top schools. Last year, it raised $26,319 — No. 10 in the state, Rogers said. It’s already surpassed that number, raising more than $27,000 so far. The total amount will be known after this weekend.

Since the school began participating in 1997, the school has raised more than $748,725 for the American Heart Association.

“It’s definitely not the average,” Rogers said. “That is a considerable amount of money for one school, but you can tell with that amount of money they’ve raised in their lifetime it is a true tradition and it’s meaningful to the school.”

While a different physical education teacher introduced Spring Brook Elementary to the challenge, Vine was happy to continue the tradition, he said.

The challenge usually kicks off in mid-January, about a week after the students come back from winter break. They spend four week teaching kids about heart health and fundraising before it wraps up with a student celebration featuring a DJ and activity stations.

While Vine is not as involved in the fundraising aspect of Kids Heart Challenge, he said he loves incorporating the educational component into his lessons.

“Two of the things that (American Heart Association) talks heavily about is hands-only CPR, and then recognizing the signs and symptoms of the stroke, and I take that to the kids and talk about adding that to their toolbox inside of their brain,” he said, emphasizing to students how learning these skills may be useful at an unexpected moment later in life.

Some aspects of the challenge can be difficult to teach, Vine said. As part of it, he puts up a display for students to read about children who have suffered heart complications.

“(The students are) more in shock over what these kids have gone through, because they can’t imagine what they’ve never experienced,” he said. “It talks about how a kid had open heart surgery at age three. … Many of these kids, the most they’ve ever experienced is a broken bone.”

Another component of the challenge is the variety of activities to teach kids how to elevate their heart rates. One of Vine’s favorites is the Jump Rope Ninja challenge, where students can earn different “belts” depending on how much they can consistently jump rope.

“The biggest thing is seeing the kids when they’re being able to continuously learn how to jump rope,” Vine said. “That, right there, is magical for some of these kids.”

Some of the students start off in kindergarten having never jumped rope, but as they get older and better, he’s watched those same students reach “black belt status,” which is given to kids who can jump rope continuously 250 times.

But Vine encourages his students not to stop there. Rather, he pushes them to reach G.O.A.T. – Greatest Of All Time – status, which requires students to continuously jump 500 times in a row.

It brings him joy to see “the smiles on their faces” when the students hit that 500 number, he said.

“They oftentimes (think) that that’s impossible. ‘Mr. Vine, I can’t do that.’ And then, ‘Oh, wait a second, you just did it,’” Vine said.

It is that dedication that makes Spring Brook such a dedicated school in the challenge year after year, Rogers said.

“(Vine’s) impact proves what is possible when educators lead with heart,” she said. “He’s passionate about the American Heart Association’s mission, and he brings that to his students, which is why they do an amazing job every single year. So he isn’t just teaching P.E., he’s shaping their healthy futures and hopefully creating leaders in heart health in the future.”