As students enter their first P.E. class of second semester, classes now meet for an hour instead of 30 minutes. While P.E. used to occur three times a cycle, classes now only meet twice and students have a brand new free period. This change has already been implemented, but its reasoning has not yet been widely explained to students.
Head of Upper School Cory Zeller said, “P.E. teachers found themselves repeating all the time because you’d have one group and you would teach them something, but then the next time you meet, a different group was there, and so then you’re repeating instructions.” Most importantly, she said that “it felt counterproductive.” Reflecting on previous versions of Parker’s schedule, Zeller says that “P.E. happened in different blocks … and the class sizes would be more like eighteen to twenty. [We] try to keep the numbers low, but even across six classes, they’re much bigger,” she adds, comparing it to Parker’s current schedule. “So they [originally] decided to do three 30-minute classes, just to keep the numbers down.”
A policy recently implemented within the P.E. schedule change is that freshmen and sophomores have P.E. together while juniors and seniors have P.E. together. Zeller responds to this by saying, “Now, with only two grades, they don’t need to have half an hour sessions because the numbers will automatically be lower. A full hour will just give more time to do a complete workout. With this change, it will be a consistent two days in a row where you can really build skills.” Additionally, students now “have a full period off.” added Zeller. She says that having free time is “part of wellness too,” giving insight to its appearance in the wellness block.
To sum up the benefits of the change, Zeller says, “In this way, we have both the PE department being able to do their full pedagogy, and we get the benefit of wellness for students.” In agreement with Zeller, Physical Education Teacher Tyler Heidtke said, “We’re allowed to teach our curriculum more in depth.” From his perspective, 30 minutes was “not enough time to get a lot done,” and “having to reteach things over and over,” drove the change. He thinks the “hour-long class will let us get a lot more done. We’ll be able to have more in-depth class time.”
While this change has its explained benefits, tenth grade student Uriel Castaneda describes its pitfalls. “I dislike the P.E. schedule because firstly, they are increasing the amount of time we do PE by 30 minutes.” Before the change, P.E. lasted an hour and a half per cycle, giving students one hour and 30 minutes of free time in isolated 30-minute chunks. Now, P.E. lasts a total of two hours every cycle, and now students only have one hour of free time. “It’s a lot better to know that you have a 30-minute gap every time there’s a PE in the rotation, because it helps a lot of students who have to get lunch with teachers or to catch up on work we’re behind on,” Castaneda said. He emphasizes that even though the free period is longer, shorter and more frequent breaks in the day are more valued by the students.
With any reform in the Upper School, the “change is going to spark emotion,” Heidtke says. But, only time will tell whether or not a change is beneficial. Regardless of whether students enjoy the change or not, administrators and teachers have said that the new schedule is designed to improve instruction and student wellness.
