PE Class is Different In Highschool Now?

[Wish Upon A Star]

DD (10th grade) got her first interim report yesterday. She is doing really well in all her courses except for PE. For PE the comments were "minimal effort" and she received an "F".

How someone gets an "F" in PE is mind baffling since her other courses indicate possible honors for the 1st marking period. While asking DD about class participation and being dressed and on time to class, she states that she is always on time, dressed and does participate. Then she throws in "my PE teacher doesn't like me because I don't play sports" Now while I don't truly believe that, it makes me wonder why PE is so much different now than what it was 20 years ago when I was in highschool. All we had to do is dress and participate and it was an automatic "A".

I know there have been some section quizzes which obviously she didn't do well on, but receiving an "F" makes me wonder how much those quizzes count towards an actual grade.

Anyone know why PE has changed that section tests/quizzes are counted more than effort/participation?

I'm awaiting a response from the PE teacher.

 

[winniedapooh]

I would go and speak to the PE teacher to see what is going on. My daughter is not very athletic but shows up on time, dressed, etc. and participates to her abilities as wells as tests well and she gets A's. Makes me wonder what they are thinking and it could also be a wrong grade. This would not be the first teacher to have given a wrong mark.

 

[luvflorida]

This reminds me of my daughter! She is 14 and a Freshman. She also just got her interim progress report and has all A's and one B+ so far this quarter, but her gym class section is blank! I asked her about it, and she said she missed class the day the gym techer was supposed to fill out her section.

My daughter HATES gym class and it has been an issue since the beginning of the school year. Same thing, she isn't involved in sports and most of the kids in her gym class are real "jocks". It isn't that she doesn't like physical activity. She is very active with dance, taking 8-10 hours a week of dance instruction. I've told her to just do her best and try to get through the semester with a positive attitude, and after this semester she will NEVER have to take gym class again. Her school requires one semester of gym.

The same thing concerns me, though. I'd hate to see gym class keep her off the honor roll.

 

[Rock'n Robin]

I would encourage all non-athletes to try and get into summer school gym, if it is offered in your area. I am really pushing DD to take it when she is in HS, for scheduling reasons--when you need a bunch of credits and want to take electives, you can't waste a class period for a semester on phys. ed. Summer school phys. ed. is a lot more laid back and you get the pain out of the way in 4 weeks instead of 18!
Robin M.

 

[luvflorida]

Boy, does my daughter wish they had a program like that around here!

 

[chrissyk]

We only had to take 1 semester of gym in high school too. Do they really make kids take it every semester now? I know that physical activity is important, but that seems like a lot of instruction time eaten up by a non-academic class. I'm not dissing gym...I actually really enjoyed my 1 semester of it. It's just that things are so competitive these days in terms of academics..I can't see losing time every day for gym.

 

[sap1227]

sigh......this reminds me of my PE class in 9th grade. It was a semester class and I had it 2nd semester. My teacher was the Varsity PE Coach. The coach handed me my certificate for having a 4.0 GPA the first semester and said, "a 4.0, we can change that". 9 weeks later he gave me an undeserved "B". I knew it was undeserved because I had this class during basketball season and we never did anything except sit outside his office while he did his playbook for the basketball team. A quick meeting with the principal and my grade was changed

Good luck to your DD, it sounds like nothing has changed in the last 10 years. I would meet with the principal if I were you!

 

[janette]

My 13yo DD hates PE and is doing external PE for the first time this year. If someone is doing specific sports outside of school they can get credit for that instead of doing PE in school. If they do 15+ hrs they can get out an hour early, 10-15 hours they can substitute another elective. So far it works out great. She does dance (ballet is one of the qualified sports) and would be doing the dance hours anyway so it works out great.

 

[buzzlady]

When I was in high school, we had gym 3 semesters and health 1 semester. The only exception was when I was a Jr., we had drivers ed, drivers simulation and behind the wheel 1 semester each (that was my favorite year - yay only 1 semester of gym!).

DS12 has gym every day for 4 semesters and he's in the middle school. It was explained at back to school night that all students start with a grade of 80 and for each day that they change their clothes (top & bottoms) they get 5pts. If they don't change they lose 5pts.

DS8 has gym 2x a week 4 semesters in elementary school.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Originally posted by Rock'n Robin
I would encourage all non-athletes to try and get into summer school gym, if it is offered in your area. I am really pushing DD to take it when she is in HS, for scheduling reasons--when you need a bunch of credits and want to take electives, you can't waste a class period for a semester on phys. ed. Summer school phys. ed. is a lot more laid back and you get the pain out of the way in 4 weeks instead of 18!
Robin M.

YEP!!! We have it here and dd will be taking PE over the summer!

 

[stm61]

no such thing here in NJ, or in SC where I lived before. If you fail a marking pd, you double up next yr. At elementary level it's all yr, twice a wk. Hs it's 5 times a wk every yr unless you have a lab class like chem or biology. Then you miss 1 day a wk for your lab. You do get 1 marking pd where you have health class instead of gym. The district we live in has a pool at the hs and they require one marking pd of swimming every yr. The teachers tell me they have a group of girls that seem to have their period non-stop from Sept thru June! They figured out that the teacher's won't force them in the water with that excuse and they haven't challenged them so far. My sympathy is with the kids- who wants a coed swim class, especially in the winter, or first period of the day?

 

[brerrabbit]

I never took it in High School because I played Football, Baseball, Golf, and some Track (discus). If you were on a team they counted that as you PE credit. My son played Basketball, ran Cross Country, and played Baseball but had to take that as a class to get the credit. With my DD she's in Marching Band and so that counts as her PE credit. She does about eight hours a week after school and as long as she attends the whole semester she will get credit. If she does that for 4 years she has the 2 credits (1/2 per semester) she needs to graduate.

 

[Toby'sFriend]

I feel your pain.
My Freshman in High School gets a fitness test every Friday, part of which is a mile run. To get a good grade, you have to beat or match your previous week's time. Last week he had a cold at the beginning of the week, had asthma attacks on Wed. and Thursday, and then Friday was wet and rainy. His mile time dropped by 7 seconds.

oh big huge gasp. He still had the 2nd fastest time of all the Freshman. But he got a D+ in PE last week which has dropped his PE grade down to a B+. It stinks too because usually PE really helps his GPA.

I hope he stays healthy the rest of the quarter.

 

[EsmeraldaX]

Wow. When I was in school, for PE you either got a P for pass or F for fail.

If you showed up, got dressed, and tried, you got a P. It did not affect your GPA.

 

[doubletrouble_vb]

Most of these posts were pretty depressing. Girls need to have a more positive outlook towards physical activity before they gain unnecessary hard to lose weight later on in life...and it doesn't sound like the schools or the parents are encouraging it. Rather than finding a way out of it for the kids or forcing coaches to increase the grade maybe try going to the schools and see if a gym class that would be useful lifelong could be offered...like aerobics...my couch potato niece is happily participating in church aerobics...her sister is aggressively pursuing the class too because she's graduated and is no longer burning off calories in marching band.

And that last post about having to beat your time was just ridiculous. All that teaches kids to do is sandbag at the beginning so you can achieve easily at the end.

 

[Toby'sFriend]

And that last post about having to beat your time was just ridiculous. All that teaches kids to do is sandbag at the beginning so you can achieve easily at the end.

I know. But I don't think my kid is sharp enough to have figured that out yet. Plus, the first week of school he had just come off of summer soccer boot camp training where they were running 5 or 6 miles a day. His baseline time is REALLY good.

I'm on a big personal responsibility kick this year though. I told him that if he thought the grade was unfair, HE needs to go to the PE teacher and explain about the asthma attacks and not feeling 100%. If he's not willing to talk to the teacher first, I'm not willing to talk to the teacher either.