How I Would Change Gym Class
Gym class was not a great time for me.
To understand exactly how painful grade school PE was back in my day, you must experience “Go, You Chicken Fat, Go.” Back in early 1960s, PE was all about preparing for and passing the Presidential Fitness Test, which was JFK’s youth fitness standards. “Go, You Chicken Fat, Go” was a ridiculous song written expressly for the Presidential challenge and sung by a guy named Robert Preston. Every single day during PE class, we did calisthenics as it blasted over the PA system on repeat. We’d do pushups, jumping jacks, squat thrusts, chinups, all while listening to this masterpiece – I think I’m finally realizing why I hated strength training and gravitated toward long distance endurance events for the bulk of my youth! We occasionally got to play dodgeball, and those were good days. Head shots were allowed and even encouraged. No PC stuff anywhere.
My first year of high school gym was rough, too. You see, I placed out of a few of my classes, so they bumped me up to an all-senior PE class as a freshman. I actually don’t remember all that much about the PE curriculum. It might have been great, but I wouldn’t have known because I was too busy avoiding purple nurples and dodging rat tails in the locker room. Oh, and back then we had to shower during gym, so wet towels were exclusively used for rat tail production. Let’s just say that you really don’t know pain until you’ve felt a sopping wet rat tail inscribe itself across your lower ribcage. Fun stuff. Once spring track season rolled around, though, I was the top point man on the team, usually winning the mile and two mile, and placing in the pole vault. That got me some cred and made the rest of high school bearable.
But gym was never great for me.
So today, I’m going to explain what I’d change about gym class if I was given the chance to teach or administer it. I suppose the first thing I’d change about physical eduction in schools is to make sure it still exists! Standardized testing, and all the madness that surrounds and enables it, along with tight budgets, have forced schools to cut the “non-essentials,” including gym, music, and art. I’ve definitely got nothing against math, social studies, science, and English, but being active is just as essential as those subjects. Heck, even recess is getting cut in some places. That’s just criminal.
No, I’m not considering a new career path, and no, this isn’t a policy discussion. I’m not proposing comprehensive school reform (although that’s probably what it’d take to work). I’m just having fun. In the process, hopefully I outline some tangible activities you parents find helpful enough to try. The “revolution,” if there’s going to be one, must start at the local level. You start legislating education from afar and you end up with stuff like the “Go, You Chicken Fat, Go” song playing on repeat over an aging PA system and scaring an entire generation away from pullups. You can’t rely on that. You have to be the change you seek, whether that’s playing tag with your kids on weekends, banding together with other concerned parents for “PE meetups” outside of school, or putting pressure on your kids’ schools to make time for gym and recess. Maybe you could even be a PE teacher and start the change from the inside (though I don’t know how much freedom PE teachers get to construct their own programs).
If I was put in charge of leading gym class, I’d only employ competent coaches with athletic or training backgrounds. No more math teachers filling in because there’s no money to hire a dedicated coach. They’d have to be certified through something like NCSA, and there would be a lengthy interview process. All teachers would have to be physically fit themselves, able to perform and teach (including scaling up or down for all fitness levels) basic strength and conditioning movements, and be willing to go on record against Chronic Cardio (Ok, that last one’s a joke. Kinda.).
For grade school kids, I’d:
Abolish chairs. You ever see a kid squat? They do it effortlessly. Toes pointed forward, nice neutral spine, butt to calves, and they can sit there forever. They don’t need chairs at school. Desks are tall enough and the ground is perfect for sprawling out and getting work done. Yeah, this isn’t a gym class thing, but so what? It’s my post.
Instate a mix of free play and structured exercise, including:
MovNat. This is the prime time to teach kids to move naturally through the environment. Balance, climbing, crawling, jumping, all of it. Their joint mobility is unencumbered by years of sitting and sedentary living (because, well, they’ve only been alive for half a decade), so MovNat will come naturally (get it?). Erwan, you down for a career change?
Strength training once a week. A lot of bodyweight basics – pullups, pushups, squats, planks, overhead presses – plus some light weighted movements, like learning how to hip hinge to pick stuff up off the ground (deadlifts, basically, not for weight, but for the movement pattern). Most kids do this naturally, but that goes away pretty quick. This basic weekly refresher course would keep it. And no, strength training does not stunt growth.
Sprints once a week. Six or seven all-out sprints with a couple minutes of rest in between. Kids love to run and this is a great outlet for it.
Mile runs every week. If you can run a mile well, you’re in pretty good shape.
Field trips to the wilderness for long hikes. Maybe two or three times a month get kids outside for daylong hikes. Bring along the science teachers and make it educational! This would also be a great opportunity to teach MovNat fundamentals.
A fully outfitted jungle gym with the regular stuff – swings, ladders, multiple levels, slides – and not-so-regular stuff – rings, dip bars, horizontal bars, climbing ropes. Kids would learn how to climb, swing, and play on and around the equipment, maybe even with a gymnastics day every couple weeks, but there would also be free days. I’m thinking epic matches of hot lava monsters, personally.
Lots of free time, with the equipment and space (and some nudging if necessary) to do the following:
Dodgeball. It develops catching, dodging, throwing, spatial awareness, hand-eye coordination, agility, pain tolerance, with just enough healthy competition to teach you how to win and lose.
Tag. This will usually sprout up organically, but just in case it doesn’t, I’ll be “it” first.
Capture the flag. Teamwork, strategizing, sprints. The perfect fusion of brains and brawn. And, it’s super fun.
For high schoolers, I’d do much the same, with a few changes:
Push strength training to twice a week. Bodyweight exercises, employing all the essential movements, with the option to progress to weighted exercises if the student prefers. Just three or four compound exercises each session, two or three sets per. I doubt the school could stock enough barbells and weights for forty kids at once, so we’d have to use a lot of cheaper, more versatile equipment – sandbags, kettlbebells, medicine balls, slosh tubes. Imagine if everyone knew how to squat, deadlift, and press with perfect form that was ingrained at a young age?
Mobility work, daily, as a five to ten minute warmup. Teens are not quite as limber as kids, but far more mobile than most adults, so we can get ‘em before they stiffen up. I’d draw from MobilityWOD‘s trove of movements.
More MovNat.
Wrestling. I remember doing a bit of this in grade school PE. I wasn’t very good (too small and there were no weight classes), but it was fun. I could definitely see wrestling as a great way to teach kids practical self-defense. And wrestling makes for an interesting, visceral anatomy lesson.
Lots of play. Of course, I’d promote Ultimate as the, well, ultimate fun game for teens. Lots of running, jumping, changing directions, throwing, catching, predicting flight paths, orchestrating plays and generally having a blast. A kid who can learn the basic skills of Ultimate can probably play any sport with competency later in life. I’ll admit that I’m having a hard time imagining cynical teens playing without a shred of irony, but maybe if those same teens came up in my mythical grade school PE curriculum, they’d be different. Who knows.
It’s not about burning calories. I’m not overly concerned with seven year olds failing to engage in high intensity interval training or deadlifting their own bodyweight. Kids simply need to move. At their age, they need to jump, leap, and flail their arms as often as possible. They need to twist out of the way of an incoming rubber ball or classmate’s outstretched hand. Bruises, grass stains, and scraped knees need to be part of the normal curriculum, and I want to see some of the more arcane versions of tag unearthed and field researched by our youngest scholars. It is during childhood that the innate human need to move must be encouraged, rather than stifled, because it will set the tone for the rest of that child’s life. Look, kids pop out of the womb wanting to move and touch and grab and experience. You know how babies are always looking wide-eyed and amazed at everything? That’s because they are. And once they figure out how to clamber onto their two feet, they’re off climbing, running, waddling, and yes, falling to explore this interesting new world. We gotta keep that going!
I think my “program” would work (if competent teacher/coaches were widely available and lawsuits were rare) and it would help get kids off on the right track toward a lifelong appreciation of movement. At the very least, it’d be better than whatever we have now.
What do you think? Readers, parents, teens? Is my vision for PE pure fantasy without any real chance? Are things really as dire as I’ve been led to believe? If you could change something about gym class, what would it be? Let me know in the comment section.
As you may know, next Tuesday – just six days away – marks the official release of my new book, The Primal Blueprint 21-Day Total Body Transformation. It’s designed to walk you through, step-by-step, the first three weeks of going Primal, getting healthy, and taking control of the rest of your life. Since three weeks is a relatively short period of time, I worked hard for the better part of two years to iron out the details and make sure that it actually works. Well, it does, and I’m confident that this could be the bridge to break through to the mainstream. If you couldn’t tell already, I’m pretty excited. I’ll be releasing more details next week, but I’m gonna need your help. Are you with me?
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
As the mother of two young ones and someone still recovering from miserable gym class experiences in her own day, I love this post. I completely agree about more emphasis on the outdoors and MovNat type exercise. More obstacle courses! More choice! More games and real-life exertion! And I’m totally with you on standing at the desks. When I was in high school, I at least got to choose classes. Although I’m a total non-athlete, I opted for the swimming and weight-lifting classes every time just because they seemed useful and individually-focused instead of another boring team sport in which non-athletes were ignored by the coach-teacher.
Happy to join the gym revolution!
Ugh. I remember gym class. Imagine being the artsy, clumsy kid in gym class. Yet, I was the first girl to finish the mile, ran XC and can squat all day.
A group of us in this small town are trying to develop a school based on the work of Dr. Montessori and creative movement. Kids don’t have to sit if they don’t want to. Movement is encouraged. Art is done with math, science with music, civics with movement. All things are interconnected.
Plus, lunch will be made by the students, eaten family style and be made from wholesome ingredients. There will likely be grains, but as a board member I’m pushing to eliminate gluten especially.
There are people out there who are making this happen!
Mark, if you ever opened a school, or a camp that was like this, my kids would be the first to sign up (assuming I had kids at that point). Hell, I’d even switch careers and become a teacher just to be a part of it all =)
Great idea! How about a Family PrimalCon!
I’m an art teacher in TN (it sounds silly to have to specify state, but each state’s curriculum varies) and try my best to keep in contact with the PE teachers I work with. I think your ideas are wonderful, and they probably would too! Wonderful and at the same time not very plausible (but doable). And I think a number of PE teachers are trying their best to make sure students are as active as possible and be as creative with it as possible to worm around curriculum guidelines(at least the ones I know). But I think before reforming exercise we need to take a look at the food! You can’t expect children to do half these things when their breakfast consists of pouring strawberry milk on Trix. And maybe they eat a crusty pizza with ice cream for lunch. It’s deplorable. I can’t stand watching the madness during breakfast duty…
“Heck, even recess is getting cut in some places. That’s just criminal.”
-This is absolutely absurd. It’s not hard to believe in today’s world!
“Kids simply need to move.” – This says it all!
There is always hope. But we need to take action. We need MORE PRIMAL/PALEO BLOGS. I’ll be writing a couple of posts on why people need to start a primal/paleo blog. And, I’ll be helping anyone get started that wants too.
I sometimes liked gym class and sometimes hated it. If gym class was exactly what you just laid out then I would have always loved it. Seriously!
I’ve already started a blog, and I’m only 3 weeks into PB =)
Couldn’t agree more, don’t even think we did as much as you did in our PE Lessons here in the UK!! Funnily enough, as someone who’s suffered badly with her back and now attends Alexander Technique lessons to correct my posture, the part of your post which stood out to me the most was the fact that the western world needs to do away with chairs and tables!! I seriously believe this is what has caused us all to sit so wrong when writing, typing, eating, driving etc and that is what has put us in a world where backpain is so common – when I see elderly African tribesmen/women squating as you suggested it makes me laugh that nobody in our culture would ever expect an elderly person to sit on the floor like that, it’s polite to “offer them a seat” – the irony is that’s what probably made them stiffen up so much in the first place!!
I have a 4 and 3yr old and since researching so much into my health (inc the happy day I found MDA!), I have watched them in awe how they move so freely and think it’s so sad that I had assumed that I didn’t move/squat like that cos I was an adult now and we’re incapable!!!! Nooooo I say!!! I’m gonna try to get back to that, it’s gonna take time but I reckon if I can try sitting on the floor for a portion of each evening then I might start loosening…. think of the prospects – a larger lounge once we get rid of the sofa’s, lol!!!
H x
I remember the song. I was the “chubby” girl in school and have been all my life…55 years! I was made fun of so many times. I hated school, I hated P.E., I would hide in the bathroom at lunch and eat my sack lunch in there where no one could see me and call me “Pig”. I have never told that to anyone before. That was 1972…I quit school after I failed the 10th grade. I failed mostly because my tormentor was in the majority of my classes that year. And the one class that he wasn’t in was Math…I made A+ all year in that class. The only part of school I enjoyed. I see all these kids today and they are so much heavier than I was back in the 60′s. It is because of the choices of our government…The FDA in allowing so much crap into our foods! Stay away from Processed Foods Is The #1 Rule of my shopping list now! Gym classes being cut out of schools. Video games…so much has contributed to the obesity explosion over the last 50 years!
I love reading your posts and books. We all need to help each other and work together to get our young kids on the right track and get some of us old schoolers back up and moving again…I am doing so much better than I was 10 years ago! I wish I could go back in time and change a few things…sigh…but, all I can do is make wise choices from now on for myself and my family. I do the grocery buying and cooking and it is in my hands to do right by them! Thank you for all that you are doing for our children and their future!
Robert Preston was The Music Man! “Chicken Fat” was composed by the same songwriters.
Our high school boasted one of the first ropes courses. We crossed monkey bridges, flew down zip wires, balanced on tightropes, belayed each other up and down climbing poles, and climbed up a double rope with an ascender on each limb. I wowed my classmates by climbing halfway up the light tower at the football stadium and then letting go, and hanging by the rope. Figure 8′s and carabeeners.
That sounds like my Jr. High PE class. We even had a big universal weight machine for strength training. We also had ropes to the ceiling of the gym and climbing pegs on the wall. We also had square dancing. Everyone had to participate!
What was really cool was in high school we also had archery! Can you imagine these days giving a class full of kids bows and arrows? We sure had fun with them though. I can recall kids shooting the arrows high up in the pine trees behind the science building. Those trees were full of arrows!
For me PE was absolute misery. I was a klutz and the slowest runner(found out as an adult that I had had asthma all my life). I was the skinny pencil neck geek. Team sports were nothing but humiliation for me. The only PE class I had that I liked was one called individual-dual PE my senior year where we did things like archery, tennis, bowling, weight lifting(I was good at that) and running. I would have taken a dance class for PE in a red hot minute as would have most of the girls I knew. As an adult I like camping, backpacking, kayaking and just simple park walking. I occasionally do target sports such as archery and sling, but I can’t hit the broad side of a barn(I am very very nearsighted), but it is fun just to try. I still hate team sports with a passion. I personally wish they would encourage and explore more solo and noncompetative sports in PE. As adults most of us are not going to have a team to exercise with and if kids are already aquainted with solo sports they may have a better chance to keep it up as they get older.
I’m with you, Ingvildr.
Dodgeball was a great way for the bigger kids to abuse the scrawny ones like me.
We are all so different. I hated competitive sports as a child, but loved “killing” my friends at Scrabble.
Once I was able to take Modern Dance as my gym class, life was much more fun!
Probably why I am a big fan of homeschooling–one size doesn’t fit all…
I am an Elementary P.E. teacher. I teach K-5, and I totally agree that we need more physical fitness in our schools. I only see each class for 40 minutes once a week. I love my job and try to introduce my students to as much health and fitness along with sport and game. I am also a certifited CrossFit trainer, so I implement some of that in my classes. I have coined your W.O.W. and try to have my classes go through a quick 5-10 workout of the week before we get into the skill work or sport specific stuff. I have medballs, kettlebells, abmats, and much more. I wish I could have them more then once a week but I try and give them as much as possible in the time I have with them. The P.E. teacher before me never took them outside, so I try and get them outside as much as possible. I hope that by the time they leave elementary school they have a positive outlook on physical activity and look forward to moving outside. I am happy to say that all 700+ students can do what I call a “Superhero Squat.” (basic squat)
We need activity!!!!
Great post! I think I am one of the lucky few who have no idea what song you’re talking about! I also remember PE as play when I was in grade school. Lots of softball and soccer when the weather allowed. The majority of the time was indoors with kickball, dodgeball, floor hockey, etc. Our PE coach was actually a very fit guy that was always fun. Jr High and High School I did have the standard grumpy old man with a giant potbelly that made us run laps for half the period. Really took the fun out of it.
Wow… this is not at all what I experienced (born 1984, schooled in the 90′s).
We played sports every day. Lots of dodgeball when younger, soccer, softball, volleyball, basketball, gymnastics, lots of track during track season.
Football, floor hockey, lacrosse, handball, weight training, badminton, and karate were added to the mix in high school.
My high school gym teacher was a former bodybuilder… which was good overall I think. I also had co-ed class from K to grade 13 and loved playing with the boys.
We always did a brief warm up and stretch… I’m sure a bit of extra conditioning might have helped, but I loved having the opportunity to play sports everyday (though of course had my favorites!) I wish I still had gym class.
Just, curious, how high could you pole vault?
I think your vision for PE would be awesome!!! My memories of fitness testing were of being the fat kid who had to hang from the pull-up bar for 30 seconds because I couldn’t do any!! Oh how being Primal has changed my life
I have always thought it would be fun to open up a jungle-gym type facility for adults to just go and play. A combination of both indoor and outdoor “stuff”. Our local community center has a GIANT indoor play structure for kids and my 4 year old LOVES climbing, sliding, running, jumping, etc. Every time I look at it I think it would be awesome if there was something just like it, but scaled to adult size!
I am actually a health education major…and I talk regularly with students who are PE majors as well. The problem is, we are so tied down by budget constraints and bound by the goals of the given principle. Some support health/physical education and some principles think going up and down stairs is enough. It’s also very frustrating because I think as a society, we aren’t teaching children how to lose. Today, everyone is a “winner”…but when you get to real life situations, getting a job promotion or getting admitted to a good school…NOT EVERYONE CAN BE A WINNER. A lot of schools ban elimination games for this reason, it makes the person who was eliminated “feel bad”. It’s frustrating. Kids need to learn how win and lose.
I completely agree! And I was definitely the kid that lost a lot, so this isn’t coming from the ‘jock’. I think letting every kid win, or getting rid of competition is just setting them up for failure in the real world. Kids just need to be encouraged to MOVE, in a competitive setting or otherwise.
Ugh…I remember the ‘presidential fitness’ days. I hated it too. The best days were the dodge ball days and was appalled when my kids entered school and found it a ‘banned game’ in public schools now. How ridiculous! They want kids to be a bunch of pansies anymore..makes me sick. I say play dodgeball and knock ‘em off their feet! lol!! Yes, I was ruthless in dodgeball!
Your vision is my vision, and I am making it happen at the elementary school that I teach at in north Georgia. A few years ago, it started with me wanting to get the students outside more. So, I started using a ropes challenge course outside and doing some team-building activities and we also used the trail for outdoor runs. Then, this year, I have started an additional pe class for the kids using the Crossfit Kids methodology and training. I am hoping to get to become an affiliate soon also so that our kids can have access to a workout every day via internet. The kids love it; we squat, lift, tire jump, tire flip, sprint, run, stretch, perform body weight exercises, play games, and pretty much all the stuff you mentioned. We recently purchased a traversing rock wall so the kids can get some upper body climbing in (should be delivered any day now) indoors, and I am raising money to purchase a pull-up system ($4500) so that my half my students can be exercising at the same time performing pull-ups, ring exercises, rope climbs, etc… They took all the climbing stuff out of our playground, so I am bringing some climbing/hanging back for our class! My vision is becoming a reality; I only wish I could see all of them every day! I also try to influence nutrition by telling them what they need to be eating; not what they shouldn’t be eating. My school has been really supportive in making health and fitness an important aspect of our school and the students’ education, and I hope to grow our program into something big! The biggest impact I have seen is on the non-athletic students who feel challenged and successful in my class. I have had parents say that their kids love the class and have never liked any other type of fitness activity before. The students also journal the workouts and their progress, so they can set goals, and see how he/she has grown. Awesome stuff! If only the government would look at how pe should be….I am covering the standards for the most part that they want me to teach, and I am showing students how fun fitness and moving can be!
Lori,
That is awesome. As Mark said, you ARE the change you want to see. I’m looking to start a similar program w/in the next yr or so. Would you be willing to talk via email about your trials and tribulations getting thismprogram up and running?
What memories you’re bringing back with the mention of the Chicken Fat song! My son is in 3rd grade, and his school cut recesses last year so now they have only one after lunch. At first I was concerned, but now I think it’s turning out well because the old “morning recess” has been replaced with a “movement break” in which the kids do different structured activities together. A lot of times it’s jogging or running sprints, sometimes they do calisthenics or play kick ball. I think it’s helpful to add some structure because some kids at recess will only go sit on the bench with their friends and look at their Pokemon cards. This gets them all moving!
Also, I was pleased when my son’s school was able to scrape up the funds last year to add a full-time, dedicated PE teacher. He now has gym class 2x week, and he loves it. She’s doing some really fun things with the kids like rock climbing walls, capture the flag, teaching them about good sportsmanship and working as a team.
“It is during childhood that the innate human need to move must be encouraged, rather than stifled, because it will set the tone for the rest of that child’s life.”
That’s the take-away for me.
Alas, school in general stifles every human instinct, especially the instinct to move. We spend 7 hours a day for 12+ years supressing movement in our children, and then we wonder why we have an obesity problem, and why it’s so hard for adults to exercise.
Sometimes the wild critters on my property look at me and then at each other, and slowly shake their heads. “Humans are just nuts” I think I hear them saying. “Don’t even try to understand them.”
Vivid memories here too of calisthenics in the gym to Go, You Chicken Fat, Go from the early 80s. I always found the song confusing, and therefore disturbing… what did it mean? Where was the fat? On us or in what we ate? No one could adequately explain it to me.
One thing I’d add is falling and rolling- as in Judo/Jujitsu falling and rolling. The best thing to take away from martial arts. Kids and adults are way more likely to injure themselves in a bad fall than a fight (and there are going to be more falls than fights anyway).
You don’t really need a specific day to teach it (perhaps it’s already part of MovNat?) but it helps avoid injuries.
“Heck, even recess is getting cut in some places. That’s just criminal.”
At my kids’ elementary school, they only have PE one day a week and they don’t get recess on the day they have PE.
My 10 year old daughter would include one more change to your proposed gym class — let the kids go barefoot! She’s tried, but the PE teacher will have none of that. At least the teacher doesn’t argue about her choice to wear minimal shoes: Vibram Fivefingers (3rd grade), Feelmax Osma (4th grade), Vivobarefoot Neo (5th grade).
I’m just astounded that a world-class athlete like Mark hated gym class just as much as uncoordinated me did. Hopefully this will be encouraging to our younger readers.
I know now that given the right sports and activities, I could have learned much earlier that I actually am athletic. I do best at individual sports like century bike rides and just hiking and walking, all of which I love and tons of endurance for. I also have decent hand eye coordination, but somehow school PE didn’t foster that. I’m scared of team sports because of my school experiences, but someday I’d like to give Ultimate a try.
We had Presidential Fitness in the 1970s (missed the Chicken Fat–it was the “Free to Be You and Me” era), but my gym teacher mixed things up pretty well. My favorite kinds of games were creative forms of tag, and then all kinds of those “New Games”–Sardines, Earthballs, Parachutes…help me out here. I wish that movement would take off again. New Games are a riot for adults too. At least for this adult.
But there there were handstands and rope climing. I never could do stuff like that.
In Elementary School and Jr. High, we had to “run the hill”. Ugh. By high school we could take badminton and aerobics, so it wasn’t too bad.
Physical education, like all education, has to start in the home. Too many parents expect the schools to do all the work. And it’s not enough to simply enroll your kids in soccer or little league baseball. You have to lead by example. What message does it send when you come home and park yourself in front of the TV?
As for gym, teachers need to recognize that different kids have different abilities and you can’t come up with the same activities for everyone. Also, you can’t worry so much about making things fun. In my gym class, kids would look forward to dodgeball or basketball cause that was more fun than jogging. But what ultimately happens is that some kids dominate the game and the less athletic kids get left behind, which only deters them from taking up physical activity later on. I was good at running, but had no strength. So when it came to test how many pull ups I could do, I came up short. Well how am I supposed to build up strength if nothing I’m doing in class helps build it? That’s why I wish gym had emphasized strength training when I was a kid. I didn’t start lifting until my mid-20s. Now I love it. If only I had a school that preached the importance of it instead of letting me get by playing floor hockey.
what a fun post. my son only gets a few minutes of recess a day! before school in the morning we “workout”. he does dead lifts with a pumpking, and benches his little pumpkin too. he also loves to do burpees, and mountain climbers. he is always asking what’s next?! it gets the wiggles out before we head off to school.
So excited to see this post! I am 6 months away from getting my teaching certification in Health & Physical Education. I cannot wait to go out into the schools and hopefully make a change! It is so frustrating to hear about budget cuts, reducing required PE time, or even worse: elimination of PE. I know when I get a job I will be faced with many many challenges but I truly believe I can be an inspiration to my students and hopefully make a difference. In my college classes we are taught that PE is moving away from just team sports and moving towards life-time activities. I am actually working on a yoga unit as we speak (of course I’m procrastinating and reading MDA – opps! haha). I also would love to include orienteering and scavenger hunts (those were my favorites as a kid and think of all the sprinting involved!) in PE. Overall I want to show the students the variety of fitness activities available to them and have them find something (hopefully more than 1) that they are attracted to and can enjoy for a while. The goal is so the students can plan and implement a fitness plan for themselves when they are done, whether that includes soccer, sprints, circuit training, yoga, dance, weightlifting, or hiking. Just so they realize the importance of being active and enjoying it!
I was fortunate in high school to have had a PE class entitled “Athletic Fitness and Conditioning,” which consisted of learning some of the musculature of the body as well as actually doing weightlifting. Now, at the time, I was essentially clueless and did a bunch of isolation-type exercises, but it was cool to have a class like that if even for a semester. The problem is that it was about a twenty-student class. So out of an 800-student school, only 2.5% partook.
And PE programs are being cut? What with all the rise of child and teen obesity, I agree that PE programs should be widened, especially for younger kids. All the nonsense about young boys having ADD/ADHD is just that – nonsense. They simply need an outlet for their energy, and fewer opportunities through the day to make use of it (lack of PE, shorter recesses) isn’t helping.
bein a “hippie” kid in the 70′s, I played Ultimate almost every day in the summer (we had yr round school then) when it was a relatively new sport. I miss that…
Ack I hated those classes! I traveled around a lot as a military brat. Most PE classes were the drudgery you described, but one school did it their way – we got to do archery, martial arts, bowling, gymnastics and other sports. That was the most awesome experience. I was excited by physical activity for the first time. Most schools push softball, soccer, football – all the team sports. I liked the individual sports where you really perform on your own instead of running around or standing around on a field. The individual attention is key. I do table tennis now and there is no big field to hide on – it’s just you and your opponent.