PE/Recess time mandates

There are many team sports that are customarily IM Observation learned
outside school now. For instance, baseball. The kids start with t-ball
when they are little, and learn the skills before they are old enough to be
embarrassed and when everyone else is a klutz too.

Most of my grandsons have been started in Tball when they were kindergarten
age or before. Ditto soccer. They can't dribble very well, or shoot or
pass, they are just out there running around. Even my youngest two kids
did soccer when they were in elementary school, and my ds did football
also.

I've got a grandson that has been in football, baseball, soccer and
basketball. Football wasn't very good for him because he is a big boy for
his age and would have to play with older kids with more skills (it's
segregated by weight).

So I would say that it isn't really necessary to play baseball or most team
sports in school.

We did have a kind of feeder system for wrestling in the county schools
where one of the middle school coaches taught the boys the basics, and the
high school that his kids went to had good wrestling teams. There was also
some track and field on the middle school level and the PE teachers acted
kind of as recruiters.

The only sports I was any good at in elementary school were dodgeball and
hopscotch. I'm not sure what the knock on dodgeball is - I was really good
at the dodging part, and I didn't have to throw the ball much because by
the time I was out there were only one or two of us left. I couldn't even
jump rope very well and usually volunteered to be an all day ender. I also
absolutely could not climb a rope because I didn't have enough upper body
strength. I've never learned to dribble a ball without hitting my foot,
and I almost flunked softball in college - I totally failed ALL the skill
tests, and only passed because I got 100% on the written exam.


grandma Rosalie

Speaking as a non-athletic sort, this would have been even worse! It's
bad enough to be shuffled to a position where your inadequacies will do
as little damage to your team as possible. If you are stuck in a key

position, where everyone can REALLY see and concentrate on how bad you
are -- and where you have a higher chance of making an error that will
cost points for your team -- it is downright humiliating. A

Which is yet another important purpose of team sports in PE. Teaching about
fair play. Teaching about NOT laughing at your team mates who may be less
talented than you are. (When I took vocal music classes in high school the
teacher had a standing rule that any student who laughed at another student's
performance automatically got an F for the marking period.) About encouraging
and helping one another. About doing your best being more important than
winning.


Naomi
CAPPA Certified Lactation Educator

(either remove spamblock or change address to to e-mail
reply.)

(and the laughs and derision when I made an error), I hated
knowing I was no good and not likely to get better . . .

And if the teacher permitted laughs and derision, that was his/her fault, and
should have been stopped.

Naomi
Naomi
CAPPA Certified Lactation Educator

(either remove spamblock or change address to to e-mail
reply.)

In article ,
OSPAM (Naomi Pardue) wrote:

Speaking as a non-athletic sort, this would have been even worse! It's
bad enough to be shuffled to a position where your inadequacies will do
as little damage to your team as possible. If you are stuck in a key

position, where everyone can REALLY see and concentrate on how bad you
are -- and where you have a higher chance of making an error that will
cost points for your team -- it is downright humiliating. A

Which is yet another important purpose of team sports in PE. Teaching about
fair play. Teaching about NOT laughing at your team mates who may be less
talented than you are. (When I took vocal music classes in high school the
teacher had a standing rule that any student who laughed at another student's
performance automatically got an F for the marking period.) About encouraging
and helping one another. About doing your best being more important than
winning.



In theory, that's wonderful. It has not been my experience that the
majority of PE teachers take this approach. While it may not be as bad
as it was 30-odd years ago, it isn't all that much better. Especially
with co-ed classes all the way through school, my daughters have had
some pretty amazingly awful experiences.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

In article ,
"ColoradoSkiBum" wrote:

: I hated playing the games, I hated knowing that no one wanted me
: on their teams (no matter how the teams were chosen), I hated the
: disappointed groans of my team mates when they saw the ball coming
: towards me (and the laughs and derision when I made an error), I hated
: knowing I was no good and not likely to get better . . .
:
: I probably ought to add that I was incredibly unpopular in grade school,
: and things didn't get better for me until about my last year of high
: school. PE was only one arena where that played out, but it gave other
: kids LOTS of opportunities to let me know what they thought of me.

I don't know how old you are, but I'm betting that those experiences have
had an enormous effect on you as an adult. Why would anyone want to put
their child through that, just so they can grow up with a complete lack of
self-confidence?

I'm 51 now, so it's been a while. I think I've mostly gotten over it,
to the point where I will risk looking foolish while I try something
new. More importantly, perhaps, I frequently do things I'm not very
good at in front of the kids with whom I work, and generally enjoy
myself. I want them to know that it's OK not to be good at everything,
it's OK to try and fail, and it's even OK to have a good time while you
lose.

However, it takes very little to tap into that humiliated little girl,
to remember what it felt like.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

On 29 Sep 2003 04:32:08 GMT, OSPAM (Naomi Pardue)
wrote:

Speaking as a non-athletic sort, this would have been even worse! It's
bad enough to be shuffled to a position where your inadequacies will do
as little damage to your team as possible. If you are stuck in a key

position, where everyone can REALLY see and concentrate on how bad you
are -- and where you have a higher chance of making an error that will
cost points for your team -- it is downright humiliating. A

Which is yet another important purpose of team sports in PE. Teaching about
fair play. Teaching about NOT laughing at your team mates who may be less
talented than you are. (When I took vocal music classes in high school the
teacher had a standing rule that any student who laughed at another student's
performance automatically got an F for the marking period.) About encouraging
and helping one another. About doing your best being more important than
winning.

Perhaps, but in a gym class where the number of students is far too
high for the teacher to really watch and see what is happening, this
is unlikely to happen.

In my son's gym classes, the dominant mentality was of kids who hated
anyone who excelled. He was a good athlete and even in sports he was
not very good at he loved to try his hardest. He ended up being
tripped, being called names, etc. The gym teachers never saw any of
it. I don't think that these classes contribute to learning about
fair play at all.

They didn't for me and they certainly didn't for my son or my dd.


There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On 29 Sep 2003 04:35:06 GMT, OSPAM (Naomi Pardue)
wrote:

(and the laughs and derision when I made an error), I hated
knowing I was no good and not likely to get better . . .

And if the teacher permitted laughs and derision, that was his/her fault, and
should have been stopped.

Should have been, but tell me do you really think the gym teachers
even see what's happening? Much of this gets played out in the locker
rooms where the teacher never sees any of it.


There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

In article , Naomi Pardue says...

Speaking as a non-athletic sort, this would have been even worse! It's
bad enough to be shuffled to a position where your inadequacies will do
as little damage to your team as possible. If you are stuck in a key

position, where everyone can REALLY see and concentrate on how bad you
are -- and where you have a higher chance of making an error that will
cost points for your team -- it is downright humiliating. A

Which is yet another important purpose of team sports in PE. Teaching about
fair play. Teaching about NOT laughing at your team mates who may be less
talented than you are. (When I took vocal music classes in high school the
teacher had a standing rule that any student who laughed at another student's
performance automatically got an F for the marking period.) About encouraging
and helping one another. About doing your best being more important than
winning.

All the while you're the material for the 'lesson plan', for the bad sports as
well as the good. And you're 'opporunity to be a good sport Exhibit A' for the
bad PE teacher as well as the good.

banty

In article et,
"Amy" wrote:

These days,
lines in PE are a "no-no" as well as other "old time methods" such as
picking teams or using exercise as punishment and of course, the biggest PE
no-no of all time, dodgeball!

What's dodgeball? I remember incessant softball and volleyball (well, they
did more than that, but softball and volleyball seemed to have more time
devoted to them than the other sports!)

And I should ask you my perennial questions, as you have a professional
interest:

Can you suggest some good forms of exercise for two unsporty adults with a
2.5yo in tow?

Do you know of any coping mechanisms for said unsporty mother when said 2.5yo
becomes interested in sporting activities? (I am having trouble coping with
throwing the ball in the back yard!)

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"...children should continue to be breastfed... for up to two years of age
or beyond." -- Innocenti Declaration, Florence, 1 August 1990

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 22:10:37 +1000, Chookie
wrote:

What's dodgeball? I remember incessant softball and volleyball (well, they
did more than that, but softball and volleyball seemed to have more time
devoted to them than the other sports!)

Dodgeball is a game where two teams have a ball and try to hit the
people on the other team. You are supposed to throw at the area
between the shoulders and the knees, but most of us experienced
plenty of hits in the head and other places if we were not very quick.

The ball used is a soft rubber, but it's not a beach ball and it
stings when it hits you if it is thrown hard by someone who is
good at aiming and throwing. You are out if you are hit. And
the thrower is out if the ball is caught in the air by someone on
the other team. The object is to get everyone on the other team
out. The last man or team standing is the winner.

Most of the kids I knew hated this game. But then we were the ones
who were not *quick* and got hit by the ball a lot.


There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits