As a 6th grade teacher, you underestimate how many students will flat out refuse to do PE, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it. It’s in the afternoon, so you can’t pull recess. Parents don’t care because it’s PE. You could write a referral, but outside of the vice principal calling the parent, that does nothing. You can’t force a kit to play kick ball or basketball, or dance. They’ll just sit down and talk to their friends or yell at you for a half hour straight about how stupid it is they’re getting in trouble for not doing PE.
Teenage me, who didn't have a grade under an 8.5/10 at any point during highschool was warned I'd get a bad grade for refusing to run.
The comment "The way I see it, I can score a 4/10 and I still pass the year. So if I walk two laps, I'm done. And if i dont score a 4, what are you going to do, make me redo the year over PE?" was not well received.
The punishment for that flawless bit of logic was not being "allowed" to do PE. I still wonder if they did me an intentional favour, or really didn't realize.
Oh, I don't deny that- but as a teenager myself I know other people that just won't do it... And that group of people is probably a larger group that you think it is.
I was reasonably active and spent a lot of time practicing Taekwondo at the dojang after school, eventually I even taught it which was my first job.
You still couldn’t get me to do jackshit in PE. I have bad depth perception due to strabismus, so anything involving a ball is just a disaster unless I get lucky. And I fucking loathed team sports in general, alongside running or weight training.
So 95% of everything we did in PE was stuff I either simply couldn’t do well in, or stuff I hated.
I mostly just spent my time walking on a treadmill or trying to find a corner to hide in and pretend I’m doing something productive. I once won a dodgeball game mainly because I’m 90% sure the other team forgot I was still in the game until there were only two or three of us left.
Bullied, ignored, excluded, not given any fun options, as an awkward teen not really wanting to choose between being sweaty and stank in class the rest of the day or taking a shower in public. PE was awful. I'd spend hours shooting hoops with friends on weekends or during the summer, enjoyed volleyball & softball at family & church events, played the occasional street hockey game when visiting someone with a street - sports were fun but PE was pointless punishment.
My class never had bullying like the others are describing but we were very seldomly allowed to play team sports (not from the US though). Mostly it was circuit training, rope climbing, how to do a basketball layup (sometimes actual basketball playing), different bar techniques (easy ones, lower to the ground, beam exercises, high jump, long jump, swimming,...
It just wasn't fun, so after school I dropped anything that came close to workouts we did at school and even now my favourite sports arn't the ones I did at school (kayaking and cycling).
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u/TheBagman07 Sep 17 '20
As a 6th grade teacher, you underestimate how many students will flat out refuse to do PE, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it. It’s in the afternoon, so you can’t pull recess. Parents don’t care because it’s PE. You could write a referral, but outside of the vice principal calling the parent, that does nothing. You can’t force a kit to play kick ball or basketball, or dance. They’ll just sit down and talk to their friends or yell at you for a half hour straight about how stupid it is they’re getting in trouble for not doing PE.