The Carone Learning Story
Our Philosophy
Carone Learning believes every student can lead a successful and healthy life by establishing strong health and exercise habits and gaining the essential skills needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Our student-driven, quality curriculum provides tools, knowledge, motivation, and accountability on an individualized level. It helps students learn how to reach their short and long term health, fitness and career goals and empowers them to be healthy and fit for life.
Health and fitness affects every aspect of a student’s life: their mental health, academic proficiency, self-esteem, social competency, and ability to function in today’s world. Physical fitness and health are crucial, yet often neglected, elements in K-12 education.
The number of sedentary children and adolescents in the U.S. continues to increase at an alarming rate and many of these youth are turning into inactive, unhealthy adults— leading to a national epidemic with devastating physical, emotional, economic, and social consequences. Carone Learning seeks to stop these trends with engaging and personalized health and fitness education.
Katie Carone’s Story: Meet Our Founder
I can still remember the great dread I had as a middle school and high school student taking PE. The PE teacher would throw out a ball and announce what sport we were going to play that day. I was terrible at sports! Part of that was because I had never really had an opportunity to learn correct technique or practice in a non-threatening environment—and I did NOT view gym class as a non-threatening environment. As with many self-conscious teens, I was mortified at the thought of trying (and failing) at school in front of everyone and completely embarrassing myself. I can clearly remember my mantra as I was standing in the outfield of a gym class softball game one day, “Please don’t let the ball come to me, please don’t let the ball come to me, please don’t let the ball come to me.” Of course the ball DID come to me, and I made a great catch– with my nose! Talk about embarrassment. Blood started gushing. I started crying. I wanted to be swallowed up by the earth right then and there. Of course, I wasn’t. And, of course, my classmates had to remind me of the incident for many weeks after.
If the goal of that PE class was to help me establish a value for physical activity and a desire for lifelong fitness, it was an epic fail. In fact, it created quite the opposite reaction in me.
Fast forward a few years to college. My roommates dragged me along to evening aerobics classes at the student field house. I had always enjoyed dancing and I was good at rhythm and music. I quickly realized that, while I wasn’t great with sports and never felt comfortable in PE, I was actually pretty good in group fitness classes. I could push myself, increase my level of fitness, AND ACTUALLY ENJOY IT! I could be athletic, and I didn’t have to be good at sports to get there!
My love for health and fitness only blossomed from there. I had always been fascinated by human physiology. Health and exercise science fit right into that niche. I became a group exercise instructor myself and loved creating new strength or aerobic routines to motivate others and help them reach their fitness goals. I also graduated as a health & fitness secondary education teacher. I gained experience teaching in the community and the classroom. My horizons broadened even more as I entered the relatively new field of online learning–serving as an online teacher, course developer, and administrator.
In both my face to face and online experiences, I saw that I was not the only one that struggled with PE class. I saw students that, like me, were intimidated by PE. Student athletes that were already doing a lot of physical activity, but not necessarily learning the principles behind it. Students with health issues that couldn’t attend every day or complete all the same tasks as others. Students that needed more individualized time and attention. And students that were over-achievers who wanted to move at an accelerated pace or use the time allotted for health and PE to take AP, honors, language, or extra- curricular courses. YET, I didn’t see a great solution for all these students.
My past experience evoked in me the desire to help others succeed and gain a love for lifelong health and fitness as I had. Additionally, I saw how online learning opened so many doors for students in other curricular areas by providing flexibility, personalized learning, individualized instruction and more. Why not take advantage of those same benefits in promoting health and fitness? Thus, with the revolutionary combination of health, fitness, and online learning, Carone Learning was born!