By: Fabiola Grosshan
Submitted: 2010-05-31 05:45:03 | Word Count: 617
Physical education is an important part of the middle school curriculum, as it has the potential to inform a student’s lifelong health and physical exercise habits. Kids who engage in and enjoy physical activities from an early age are much more likely to continue exercising regularly when they become adults. Despite the fact that there’s plenty of research to shows that quality preschool physical education programs all the way up to middle school have many positive health benefits for students, many of the country’s PE programs today are underdeveloped.
In order to help improve physical education programs in middle schools, the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) is seeking to help schools implement new PE curriculums designed to encourage student participation and the development of lifelong health habits. It is important to identify why students are not participating; students, parents, and teachers are at fault. Many elementary physical education teachers do a good job of creating PE lesson plans, but it seems to end there.
[ advertisement ]
Rethinking the Typical Middle School PE Curriculum
Middle school physical education curriculums today are made up of mostly team-oriented sports and activities, i.e. soccer, flag-football, basketball, etc.; essentially, the popular sports that are highly regarded by American cultural standards. While many students do enjoy these activities, few of them continue to engage in them once they reach adulthood. Some of the most common reasons include a lack of time, equipment and limited access to facilities, not to mention the fact that team sports require that you bring together a large group of people who are knowledgeable of the sport and enjoy it. Additionally, many students simply do not thrive in a competitive, team sports environment, causing many of them to lose interest in physical activity in general.
A New Curriculum
New, reshaped middle school PE lesson plans and overall curriculum would ideally be one that encourages active student participation in physical activities that go beyond the traditionally taught, team-oriented sports. These activities would be enjoyable and more approachable by a larger number of students, even those who are not typically interested or inclined toward physical activities. It would also include activities that students would be more likely to continue participating in well into their adult years, activities that could be performed (ideally) anywhere and with minimal equipment requirements.
Implementation of Leisure Activities
So what would some of these new activities be? One answer is what has come to be known as “lifetime leisure activities.” These are any activities that can be performed on a regular basis throughout one’s life. Often they are low-energy activities that the person engages in voluntarily and that can potentially improve his or her health.
The trick here is how to teach such activities to middle school students in a way that is appropriate to their level of physical and educational development. Some examples of leisure lifetime activities that might be easy and appropriate to implement in middle schools are things like bike riding, or jogging, which can be done on campus grounds and guided by instructors. It’s also important to mention that such activities would require PE instructors to participate in the exercises as well. Rather than passive observers, PE teachers would be active role models for students. Also, this new approach to high school, middle school, and elementary physical education does not propose that team sports be supplanted by lifetime leisure activities. The lifetime leisure activities would serve to complement the existing curriculum, expanding the range of physical exercise habits that are nurtured in middle school students.
