Physical Education TAKS?

You thought it could never be.  Math, Science, History, English…sure.  Art?  Maybe.  But P.E.?

Yes.

For the past four days, my colleagues and I have been proctoring the equivalent of a Physical Education TAKS. 

The soul-killing machine is running on the high-octane fuel of public paranoia: this time, paranoia about teenage health and obesity.  And the state government now requires public schools to gather data, not only on high school students’ academic abilities, but also on their height, weight, physical strength, endurance, and flexibility.

(Yes, I did say weight.  Every student must step on a scale with a teacher watching.  The teacher then records the weight on a clipboard.  Humiliating.)

This year, our campus decided to let the English teachers proctor the P.E. exams DURING OUR ENGLISH CLASSES, for the simple administrative reason that every student has an English teacher.  It was a question of efficiency.  The easiest answer to the question, “how do we make sure we test every student on campus, none excluded?  Where will every student be in the next week?”

So here’s what I have to do.  First, I cart my class down to the gym.  Three, four, or ten of them complain along the way because they forgot to dress comfortably, and they want to know if they can go to the locker room to change.  (Official party-line answer: No way.  Takes too long.  Too many students to get through.  You’ll just have to do your situps in the skirt you’re wearing.  Wait–are you kidding me?)

When we get to the gym, the students line up.  They listen to the gym instructor as he demonstrates the proper posture and execution of a situp.  Then he calls out, “Okay Mr. Tran, we’re ready!”  And somewhere in the depths of a technical cavern, Mr. Tran hits a button.  Then, blaring over the gym’s overhead speakers (loud enough for students to hear, though their iPods have already ruined their eardrums), comes the most abrasive voice I have ever heard.  It says, “Okay, now we’re going to do the pushups.  Ready?  Down.  Up.  One.  Down.  Up.  Two…” 

But the kids are already in the SIT up position, not the PUSH up position; and the last-minute change confuses them silly until the coach shouts at Mr. Tran to skip that track on the CD because we’re doing the situps first.

Then the right cadence sounds, and the kids do their situps.  With the cadence.  Up, Down, One.  Up, Down, Two.  And when they finish, they come to me, and I write down how many they did.  One at a time.  “How many, Francis?  Eight?  Jerome?  Thirty-seven?” 

Eighty situps and the CD stops.

Then it’s time for pushups.

We have been doing this (and variations of this) since Tuesday.  We will continue until this Monday.

In case you are wondering, we had ONE DAY of instruction time in between the academic TAKS and the required Physical Education exam.  One day.  After playing Gym Instructor, I will have preciesely one day to teach my students before they take their Advanced Placement Exams.  Is anyone feeling overtested?

Despite being an invasion of privacy and, like so much that our state mandates, utterly soul-killing, this phys-ed exam MAKES NO ACADEMIC SENSE.  I cannot believe that anyone thinks it is a good idea.

One of the things that TEACHERS do to cope with the soul-killing effects of TAKS: we hum.  Around noon today, a student noticed and asked, “Mr. Schmidt, are you humming?”  And I said, “Yeah, a song from Rent.“  “Oh, I love Rent!” she said.  This was the song:

 

Coming tomorrow: more TAKS-evasion tips for teachers.  I’ve been collecting them from colleagues around the state.  (Contribute if you have any good ones.)