Don't sweat it: how some schools do—and don't do—PE

Education Next, Fall, 2006 by Bob Cullen

But Bonzano does not expect this situation to change, because it satisfies the desires of too many constituencies.

"We have parents who would like to cut PE further," she says. "They'd like more time for Advanced Placement academic classes. They're focused on their kids getting into the Ivy League, and they know those colleges don't care about PE grades."

Like their parents, she says, Yorktown students are focused on building a resume that will look good to selective colleges. PE has no role in that.

Lanier Middle School

Picking Up the Pace

Perhaps the most a determined teacher can do in the current system is make students burn calories nearly all the time they're in PE class.

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That's what Denise Moser does at Lanier Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia, a school with a mix of ethnicities and income levels that mirrors that of the general population. Moser, who is 31, came to PE teaching by a nontraditional route. A certified personal trainer, she got into teaching on a provisional license. When she looked at the way most physical education classes were run, she saw one thing she thought she could improve immediately: "There was too much downtime," she says.

Moser has to adapt her personal training techniques to a class where she and another teacher handle as many as 80 students at a time. And on a recent Monday afternoon, that was what she and fellow teacher Meghan Doran do. The students come into class wearing gym shorts and T-shirts that read "Get Fit at Lanier" on the back. Moser has them walk and jog around the gym while she and Doran set up six rows of "stations." At one station there are elastic bands. At another there are homemade low platforms, constructed of wood, for step drills. Other stations have only the walls of the gym or the first row of bleachers. But there is a station for every student. No one waits in line in Moser's classes.

Within minutes, Moser and Doran have all 80 students at a station and exercise begins. For 40 seconds, one row of students might be required to do as many arm curls as possible with the elastic band. Then a whistle blows, and that group of students runs to the wooden platforms, where they do 40 seconds of step drills while another group takes its place with the bands. Some stations are simple calisthenics, push-ups, or squats with backs pressed to the gym wall.

Every seven minutes a round ends, and Doran and Moser demonstrate new drills to be performed at each station. The routine is familiar to the students, and with the exception of a brief water break, they are in motion from 2:15 to 2:46.

Boot Camp

But Moser is not done for the day. At 3 p.m., she greets about a dozen students for an afterschool activity called "Lanier Boot Camp." Once a week, she and fellow teacher Pam Clingenpeel give anyone who cares to show up a 45-minute workout that is the equivalent of a fitness class at a commercial gym. On this Monday, the boot camp students lift weights. They run hurdles. They do abdominal crunches and push-ups while balancing on exercise balls. The workout demands a high fitness level from Moser and Clingenpeel. The students, a self-selected group, seem to thrive on the activity. They are sweating but happy when the class ends. "I like PE, but this is more fun," says one student.