Why Should We Take Gym Class?

As a Physical education teacher it is my job to teach students about how to be healthy in their everyday lives. I specifically want to teach students in a high school setting where physical education is sometimes undervalued as just playing dodgeball in the gym. As a future educator in this field I value the belief that health, and personal fitness should be taught with the same importance as math or English class. I believe this because we live in a world where obesity rates are sky rocketing, kids are

From kindergarten to twelfth grade, one may be required to take many different types of physical education and health classes. In the first few years they more than likely would have learned some of the basic movements: hop, skip, jump, and gallop. As the years pass, they would go on to learn how to play different sports and proceed to specialize in different aspects of sports. Today the United States is facing an epidemic in which parents could outlive their children due to unhealthy bodies. The physical well being of the younger generation is a hot topic in many different school districts, as many children are not active enough. However physical education was not always promoted to children throughout history. One of the first

First of all, students do not have much knowledge about the different fitness components; they do not understand the relation between the fitness components and health. If students acquire the background knowledge about fitness, it could improve the class engagement and motivation, and increase the independent drive to exercise. Second barrier to students’ achievement is the lack of motivation to be active, and even more difficult, to specific fitness activities, such as sit-ups and push-ups. In today’s society, students spend more time sitting in front a screen and less time moving. Parent and school today have more responsibility making sure the children get enough physical activity. According to the New York Times (2016), “early school physical education (PE) programs can make a significant difference, and the earlier these routines are learned the more likely they will be carried forth into a healthy adulthood”. Another barrier that prevents students’ success is the loss of instructional time due to discipline problems. The classes are too big, with many diverse students with individual problems, which are difficult to address when these issues are from very different backgrounds. Finally, there is not enough support from home affecting not only physical education, but

Across the country schools have been cutting out gym or recess from their daily schedules. Teachers and school districts desire better test scores from their students. Therefore, they want to have their students study and practice more. But in fact, studies suggest that adding a physical activity program or increasing the amount of time students have physical activity may be more beneficial to students and their test scores. There have been thousands of studies on this topic. Some involve recess, others gym, and new studies are centered around taking breaks in class. All this research has shown that activity can help kids with their test scores. In most studies, more than 50% of students’ test scores were positively impacted by increasing the amount of activity during the school day (“Association” 6).

Physical education is good for students physically, mentally and socially. Taking proper care of their body can and will result in an unhealthy life and life style that could follow them for the rest of their lives. Schools all across the nation are full of obesity children. One of the problems is obesity, which is a growing epidemic in the United States, and it is said that seventy eight percent of Americans are not reaching basic activity level approvals. By motivating children to take a physical education class, we are forcing children to learn healthy life skills, which is something beneficial to everyone. Students should understand that not taking proper care of their body can bring health problems and by installing that in the school, system at a young age can prevent that. When kids back home, you don’t know their type of activities that they do like playing video games or just on social media. Physical education should be mandatory throughout 2- 12 grades so they could get use to it by the time they get out in the real world. Not only the physical aspect but also the health part in eating right and maintaining the body system. Besides ensuring healthy and fit society, Physical Education also allows students to develop their interactive skills, social skills, team dynamics and psychomotor skills. For example, when children play sports and games during Physical Education, students are encouraged to develop the spirit of

Not only do schools offer unhealthy foods for children, but most do not offer the required amount of physical activity. Most adolescents fall short of the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommendation of at least one hour of aerobic activity every day. Only 18% of students in high school met that recommendation in 2007. All schools need to require some sort of a physical activity class. In 2009 only 33% took daily physical education classes. (CDC 2) Needless to say, schools play a very crucial role in the problem of childhood obesity. Physical Activity in schools could be a huge key in helping fix this problem.

S. Surgeon General has declared childhood obesity to be an “epidemic” with significant adverse health consequences, including vascular disease and Type 2 diabetes that significantly raise health care costs for youth.” (The Impact of Physical Education 3) “The U.S. Surgeon General attributes the rise in childhood obesity, in part to, school cutbacks in Physical Education (PE), and urges all school systems to mandate daily PE that last at least one hundred and fifty minutes per week for elementary schoolchildren.” (The Impact of Physical Education 3) Research shows exercise aids children in maintaining a healthy body weight, strong and healthy muscles, strong bones and joints, improves sleep, school attendance is improved, self-esteem is better, and they are less likely to develop anxiety and depression. Those are just a few benefits of physical activity. Schools require subjects such as Math, Science, English, and Social Studies in order for children to graduate. Therefore, physical education should be a required course. Not only will adding physical education requirements help children physically but also, studies show that exercise helps with brain stimulation, which will help with test score and understanding in the classroom. Physical education will not only help with obesity but also improve some other problems schools deal with because of obese

Over the last 30-40 years, the amount and intensity of exercise has gradually declined. Few children in the United States have actually met the recommended “sixty minutes of vigorous exercise” per day (Institute of Medicine, 2013). Although most states and districts have policies pertaining to physical education, these programs lack reinforcement and are often considered weak. Physical education has slowly declined throughout the years, and the the purpose of encouraging students to make physical activity part of their daily lifestyle has been lost. Recent research from Cornell University has found that the average high school gym class consists of students being active for an average of only sixteen minutes! This is nowhere near the recommended sixty minutes of physical exercise. Physical education has been pushed to the side while academics have been prioritised. P.E. classes have become overlooked by society as a whole. Students simply see it as a courses used only for socializing, or to avoid academic courses such as Algebra, Biology, and History. While teachers no longer encourage students to be active, this should not be the path in which we take physical education. The importance of exercise and physical activity goes beyond the classroom with is proven benefits in memory, cognition and attention which are skills that can be used for daily life activities. In recent times, many programs are popping up across the country to emphasize the importance of being active!

First, physical activity in school would help students to improve their rate of academic learning. Children who are physically active would perform, retain, absorb and pay attention better at school and home, than students who are out of shape. ‘A study, conducted by Bryan Mc Cullick, a kinesiology professor at the University of Georgia, examined all 50 of the United States and found six states where elementary schools followed recommended physical education at the middle school level, and no states had strong enough regulations at the high school level.” This

Despite this popular belief, the class of physical education truly is beneficial for students at the elementary level. Most kids like to run around and have a good time, which is exactly what physical education is for. As shown in the graph from “Percentage of Youth Who Were Physically Active, By Number of Days Per Week and Sex,” only about twenty percent of adolescents were active five days per week. By keeping the physical education program, students will participate in five days of physical activity per week, which is a healthy amount. If students play on sports teams instead of physical education, they may only have two or three days of physical activity per week. Additionally, the five days of activity per week could help lower obesity rates which was shown to be nearly twenty percent in adolescents ages twelve to nineteen in the graph “Prevalence of Obesity Among Children and Adolescents Aged 2-19, by Sex and Age: United

“Walking is a lost art, said Paul Holman, a physical education teacher at Spence, but the practice can serve as a doorway to more advanced forms of physical activity, like sports or jogging”(Patrick).In some schools, they have a competition to see what students will walk to school to gain more points and the students that ride the bus to school can gain points by walking in gym class. At Cowanesque Valley High School, could not do that because most of the students live too far away but the school could have time for the students to walk around the gym or the track. “More than 50 classrooms from area schools are participating in the weeklong competition, sponsored by the Coulee Region Childhood Obesity Coalition” (Patrick). Most students get picked up or they drive to school so the most walking they get forms the door of the school to the door of the car. Students also walk around the school to get to classes but then the students sit in a room for 40 or more minutes. This is still a chance to get so physical activity and the schools would not take that much time away from students school

“Physical education hopes to accomplish, to engage all students, not just the athlete elite, in fun activities that will instill a lifelong commitment to fitness.” (Johnson, 264). Physical education in the classroom can be a vital steeping stone to the way that teenagers think about fitness. Lifelong fitness is something that everyone should be guaranteed, it mainly depends on the experience that a teenager has. Like many other subjects in school, the

Obesity is the condition of being seriously overweight. It is now considered a global health epidemic by the World Health Organization (2000) (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2010). Physical activity is important to children in the middle childhood age group because a staggering amount of children have become overweight in the last few decades and teachers play a role in preventing obesity by becoming a positive role model,

There is nothing more important than health, especially in this day and age. It’s concerning that only 29 percent of high school students surveyed by the CDC (2011) had participated in at least 60 minutes of physical activity on all seven days before the survey. The CDC also noted that only 31 percent of these high school students attended physical education class daily. Only 8 percent of elementary schools, 6.4 percent of middle schools, and 5.8 percent of high schools provide daily physical education to all of its students (SHPPS, 2000). The government is missing the fact that physical education can actually improve test scores, not the opposite.

In the modern schools, too many elementary schools are so centered academics and don’t focus on the well-being of the students. The school systems also don’t realize that physical activity can help students perform better in the classrooms. In the recent years, there has been a worldwide tendency to reduce school-based physical education in favor of academic subjects. Given the beneficial effects of exercise and the disadvantages of a sedentary lifestyle, cutbacks in physical education lessons are not near as productive as people think. Systematic reviews provide clear