This isn’t really something diet or ACS related, but I happened to think of it yesterday when I was driving past a middle school and saw kids outside on the track for gym class. Even thinking about gym class makes me shudder.
This month I’ve really been thinking about that it takes to get people to be healthy. How do we really encourage it and motivate people to adopt better lifestyle choices? Better yet, what can we do to start them off at an earlier age so they can carry it with them throughout their life? Is it something that needs to be taught in elementary school? Middle school? At home? There seems to be too many questions, but no real answers.
I know one of the ways schools try to get kids to be active is through gym class. There’s no denying it – I hated gym class. I dreaded it everyday and always tried to think of ways to get out of it. But, kids do need physical activity. I just wish it had catered to more students like myself.
One thing I never understood was the curriculum. You’d walk into gym and do your warm-up (5 laps, 150 forward jump rope, 100 backward jump rope, 25 pushups, 25 sit ups). Then you’d spend the next 35 minutes playing some competitive sport – crazy football, matball, basketball, track, dodgeball.
That’s great…if you’re an athlete or competitive and are actually good at that stuff. If you’re not, then it just feels like 45 minutes of pure torture.
I think that might be part of the reason I grew up disliking physical activity – I always associated it with gym class, which I hated. Running laps. Jumping rope. Sports. It didn’t make me want to try to maintain an active lifestyle outside of class. Forty-five minutes was enough.
For me, gym should really encourage students of all shapes and sizes to maintain an active lifestyle. So why not give them a variety of activities instead of the same sports and running year after year? That’s something I’ve never understood about gym class. Why force students to run? Why can’t you spend an entire class period just walking laps and letting friends catch up on their days? That’s physical activity. Why can’t you have a week of yoga, or callenetics, or golfing, or dancing (other than square dancing)? Why does gym have to focus on the hardcore side of working out?
What’s interesting is that I didn’t start to like walking until I was in high school, when I took a gym class called Walkasize (it was the easy way out of a gym credit, but I actually enjoyed it. I get crap for it, but who cares.) Anyway, it was through that class that I began to see the joy in walking – getting to be outside, talking about life with friends, seeing the progress you make on a daily basis. Why not apply that to all education levels? Why did I have to wait until high school to find a physical activity that didn’t make me want to skip out on it?
Like I said, this entry isn’t really diet or ACS related, but I still wanted to air it. While I’m no expert and am not looking to change the curriculum or start a revolution by any means, I think it’d be interesting to start looking at other options for gym. Definitely gives you something to think about. Or maybe that’s just me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Liz, your wish has come true. Many, many physical education (not "gym") classes now offer a variety of activities. The intention is to create lifelong movers.
Believe me, I hated "gym," too. (It didn't deserve to be called physical education back then.) Climbing the rope, running the track, jumping the horse! The only thing that kept me from being a couch potato was that I loved to play outside, and I loved to dance. The fact that I ended up teaching PE majors and am now a children's physical activity specialist is just one of life's great ironies!
Today, a developmentally appropriate elementary PE program focuses on promoting the development of children's emerging motor skills and helping them to maintain the love of movement they're born with. And a developmentally appropriate middle and high school program no longer focuses exclusively on team sports.
Far too many children grew up with a dislike of physical activity because they associated it with gym. Of course there are still many developmentally inappropriate PE programs out there. But for the majority of today's children, a negative association with physical activity will no longer be the case.
Post a Comment