School Puts Twist on PE Class

At first, Rick Hornstra sounds a little like the wannabe drill sergeants and win-at-all-costs coaches lodged in baby boomers’ collective memory as the gym teachers of old.

“Do as many pull-ups as you can and, when you can’t do any more, what are you going to do?” the Lennox Middle School physical education teacher barks to his class of eighth-graders.

“Do five more!” his class responds, just a half-beat more slowly than would a squad of green Marines.

But the vast differences between “gym class” a generation ago and “PE” now become obvious almost immediately.

The pull-up bars, for example, are not even 3 feet off the ground. Students pull their chins toward the bar while lying on their backs and resting their heels on the sand.

Hornstra raises his voice not to intimidate but to be heard over the din of the adjacent San Diego and Century freeways and the airliners flying low and right over the campus. And though he wants his students to give 100%, he won’t allow any of them to do or say anything to embarrass classmates who fail.

“Up Jimmy one! Down Jimmy two!” he says to a student giving it all he can. “Way to go, Steph! Way to go, Carrie! Very nice. Way to go, Robert!” One particularly valiant effort prompts a round of applause from the class.

That kind of encouragement is important, given that some students struggle to pull themselves up even once. One heavyset boy strains and wriggles in paroxysms of effort. He digs in his heels to gain leverage. But it doesn’t work and he collapses onto the sand, beads of sweat on his forehead.

In fact, about half the seventh-graders at this 2,000-student campus cannot fulfill the state’s expectations for upper body strength, according to test results released this week. Only 10% of the school’s students are considered fit.

That’s considerably worse than the county or state as a whole. But hardly anyone comes out looking good on this test. The reasons are well known: Children spend increasing amounts of time staring at screens--TV, computers, videos and Gameboys--and not enough time playing tag, riding bikes and climbing trees. They also eat too many French fries, burgers, tacos and pizzas.

Minority and poor children, like most of those who attend Lennox, are often worse off. For many, time after school is spent indoors: caring for younger siblings, doing chores or simply taking refuge from the dangers--real or perceived--of their neighborhoods. Parks and sports leagues are scarce.

The PE programs at most urban schools do little to help. Physical education is seen by many principals as nothing more than a dumping ground or escape valve. Schedulers sometimes assign 80 or more students to a single PE class to make academic classes smaller.

The result is that the time spent in PE is often wasted. It’s all the teacher-wrangler can do to get students to run a lap or two. So it’s impossible to actually teach fitness habits, let alone new games or skills. It’s hardly even safe to have one adult supervising that many children.

By comparison, the students at Lennox are fortunate. Hornstra, 45, is the senior member of a staff that has worked to put together a program that’s acknowledged to be one of the best in the region, if not the state. Class size is limited to about 30, reflecting the school’s commitment to the program. That, Hornstra says, allows teachers to teach instead of merely exercising crowd control.

Still, PE classes at Lennox bear only passing resemblance to those of the past that many adults remember with a mixture of dread and fear.

Hornstra says that when he started at the school, he stressed competition. He divided his students into teams and kept track of their performance, ending the season with a hard-fought tournament. These days, he stresses cooperation, teamwork and strategy to make physical fitness a more appealing prospect for everyone.

As his eighth-graders played coed team handball (a combination of basketball and soccer) one day last week, he didn’t keep score. And afterward he praised several boys for making several extra passes instead of shooting the ball.

Though he used to put much more emphasis on group calisthenics and running, he now tries to “develop a love of activity so it’s not just students getting fit now, but it’s carrying that on into adulthood.”

One way they do that is to expose youths to a wide array of activities. Lennox students learn all the traditional games--but they also try golf, using some castoff clubs the staff has assembled. They learn ballroom dancing, gymnastics, and even how to pitch a tent, where to find a campground and how to use a compass.

“We try to open their eyes to the fact that there’s not just soccer,” said Jerry Rodman, 44, another eighth-grade teacher.

Perhaps most important, teachers help students learn to develop and reach goals. Students’ fitness is tested in the fall, and teachers help them keep track of their progress. They also teach them to use heart monitors, require them to keep fitness logs and talk about good nutrition.

The results of such an approach don’t necessarily show in the short term--except maybe by making PE more fun and less stressful. Carrie Ann Ortiz, an eighth-grade teacher, concedes that Lennox students still “aren’t in as good shape as we’d like them to be.”

But, she said, there’s little the school can do alone to change that during the 50 minutes a day, 180 days a year, that students are in physical education classes. So, instructors take every opportunity to encourage them to exercise at home, hoping it will become a lifelong habit.

That’s just what Ortiz did Friday as she said goodbye to a class of eighth-graders. “Be active this weekend,” she exhorted. “Get some exercise. Don’t be sitting around watching TV.”