When you first hear the word P.E., many things can come to mind. Most people think of running, weight-lifting, sports, or the most obvious one, physical education. So why is it that students are required to write a four to five-page essay in MLA format for summer P.E. classes? On the first day of summer P.E. sessions, students are bluntly told that they have two essays to write. Many were not alone in this brief confusion, because this is a physical education class, not an English class. This left students stressed, not only because of the demanding physical activity the course required, but also multi-page essays on top of that. Freshman Nora Quisenberry shares her experiences and opinions about partaking in the curriculum.
“P.E is more about physical education and working on your body,” Quisenberry said. “They did not really teach us anything; it was just saying to choose something, and we’ll do the research ourselves. On top of the five to six hours of exercise every day, it seemed a bit lengthy. It was hard to stay on top of everything.”
For El Roble students in particular, writing was not as big a part in the P.E. curriculum compared to the Summer Session, usually ranging from short, one-word answers to filling out graphs. It is a huge jump from middle school P.E., and it can be hard on students trying to adjust to the bigger workload. Even though the school is trying to fit in a semester’s worth of P.E. in two weeks, CHS should prioritize accuracy. Students should be assigned work that is realistic to what they would actually be doing during a school year, not something they cannot envision themselves doing in a typical P.E. class. Many students echo similar sentiments as Quisenberry—assignments are not educational, and students struggle to make connections between the summer workload and the upcoming school year’s P.E. curricula. Work given to make up for a semester’s worth of PE should have at least correlated to an actual lesson, with more teacher oversight instead of letting students attempt to figure it out themselves. With little teacher instructions, issues form and can lead to dishonesty in work ethic.
