<p>And I would say the majority of those students are continuing to stuff themselves full with junk food and drinking soft drinks everyday. There’s a lot more to maintaining a healthy weight than doing a poorly planned and executed 50-min activity 3 times a week. And the majority of these students will more than likely move on to college, continue to eat and drink whatever they can and not have to worry about the gym except for that one semester activity the university forces them to take for their kinesiology credit.</p>
<p>Healthy habits have to be started at home where the whole family can contribute. Natural athletes don’t have to worry about this so much because they need the added carbs to maintain their daily routines. The rest of them could do without that cheeseburger and large fries.</p>
<p>As for the OP, most schools in accordance with ADA laws have to offer an adaptive PE class. I would assume that the district would have already established the adaptive curriculum so you could check with the principal if you are having questions. If you feel that you are being unfairly treated, then start with the teacher and move up the ladder to get it addressed. However, if it’s just one 9-page paper per quarter, then I feel that is less that what I would have expected. I would think it would be an easy assignment to write a 9-page paper on any sport or health subject in a week. There’s just so much material available.</p>
<p>“anyway the 1st two quaters my teacher gave me a 100 becuase he knew i couldnt do anything. mid year our school switches gym teachers and she wants me to do 9 PAGE PAPERS! It’s punishment!! I have to do more than the kids who particpate.”</p>
<p>It’s not punishment to be expected to do some kind of paper to substitute for not being able to actively participate in a class. I agree with others that you were wrong to blow it off. There are many physical education-related topics that you could write about that would provide you with interesting information that also would be valuable to you as you continue to try to stay healthy.</p>
<p>It takes a combination of both. I think that’s a given. Yes, I am guilty of eating a lot of junk food and I was an athlete in high school. I did not gain weight. Now that I am in college, I have pretty well continued eating the same junk and do not exercise anywhere near enough. It shows-- I’ve gained 25 pounds since high school graduation.</p>
<p>My point is if the OP had complained about what they thought was an unfair assignment in any other class, posters would have been blasting them for trying to get out of it. But, since it is PE, the common thought around here is that PE is a BS requirement and should be skipped, avoided, etc because it’s just PE. That train of thought is a major cause of obesity as well. PE programs nationwide are being cut and the health of America is declining as it occurs. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots.</p>
<p>Exactly what is there in PE to write a 9 page paper about? I can explain to you what I learned in 12 years of PE in a single word: NOTHING. </p>
<p>Like people don’t know that it’s important to get off your butt once in a while. And Hops_scout, PE DOESN’T matter. Everyone’s required to take PE but 65% of Americans are overweight. You have to want to lose weight achieve and sustain any kind of weight loss. I lost 25 pounds since finishing high school just by changing my eating habits. I don’t work out AT ALL. I’m lazy as ****. There’s more to losing weight than just exercise. </p>
<p>The health of America is declining because parents let their kids eat crap and don’t actually cook for and with their kids-when you know how to cook for yourself, you become much more picky and are much less willing to put crap in your body. You can’t trust schools to do everything. School is for learning, not poorly organized physical activity. And as for healthy food=expensive and processed foods=cheap, I changed from buying processed foods to buying fresh food a month into the semester and ended up spending LESS on groceries. I just had to spend a bit more time in the kitchen cooking. And having no food that’s ready to eat in the kitchen makes snacking more difficult. </p>
<p>I never said that everyone should cut out ALL junk food-junk food in moderation is fine. But you can’t eat junk food all the time.</p>
<p>But yeah, coming back to the subject, I agree, just write a crappy paper-if you’re any good at writing papers (or BSing), you can whip one up out of thin air overnight. I once wrote a 10 page paper overnight and got an A on it. In college.</p>
<p>Things I learned in PE (even though I am not athletic):
the basics of quite a few sports (basketball, volleyball, lacrosse, tennis to name a few)
a little about teamwork
the importance of getting up and moving</p>
<p>A 9-page paper isn’t that bad when you had all semester to work on it. Without knowing if a specific topic was assigned, you could write about 1) the history of PE in America, 2) the obesity problem and if PE can do anything to combat it, 3) compare PE requirements in different states and determine if there’s an optimal way to require it (my parents had gym every day of the school year, by state requirement. I had it 3 days a cycle for one semester of the year)</p>
<p>I wrote papers about the origins and histories of various sports. You could write papers based on the arguments right here at the Parent Cafe about whether free weights or weight machines are better. You could write about weight bearing excercise and osteoporosis or the benefits of cardiovascular workouts.</p>
<p>OP - guess what? In college, you’re going to be asked to do a lot of stuff that “doesn’t matter” or “doesn’t make sense.” And once you’re out of school, in the Real World, you’re going to be asked to do a lot of stuff that’s stupid and doesn’t matter and is just busywork. And you will do it because it’s required or you get fired. It doesn’t have to be “fair” and it doesn’t have to be reasonable. The only thing that it has to be is legal. </p>
<p>And requiring you to write a paper or 10, for which you are not medically disabled, is legal. Even if it’s more work than actually going to gym class. You cannot just decide, “This is stupid” or “This is punishment” or “It’s more important for me to work on my math” and blow it off.</p>
<p>By Senior year of high school, 9 page papers really shouldn’t be a big deal. I wrote my first 5 page paper in 4th-5th grade. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had a 5 page paper due every other week. You can easily write 9 papers on nutrition and physical education. 9 pages is not a large amount for a high schooler. I would consider that to be a fair subsitution because you cannot participate.</p>
<p>PE done right DOES matter. The thing is, it’s hard to do it right with no money.</p>
<p>This goes beyond obesity. It has been found exercise can prevent and/or treat at least 47 different medical conditions! </p>
<p>I have an idea for you futurenyustudent. Tonight I will post a list of 10 things you can do even if you can’t do calculus. At the same time, I want you to make a list of 10 things you can do while you’re DEAD.</p>
<p>Nobody’s going to die because they blew off high school PE. PE can wait until schools can get their act together on their main mission: academics. People have to WANT to change. It’s not going to happen just because you shove it down their throats. People who are so fat the lack of exercise affects their health won’t choose to exercise when schools aren’t shoving it down their throat.</p>
<p>PE at our HS is a two-year requirement (includes Health class) and the kids learn some fun and worthwhile lifetime sports. The idea is they will be exposed to <em>something</em> they may want to pursue as a leisure time activity the rest of their lives. </p>
<p>Besides the regular well-known sports, (including swimming, bowling, & golf), there are also opportunities to try canoeing & fishing and others I can’t recall at the moment.</p>
<p>I think teachers assign these types of papers because they want to discourage kids from malingering. D1 got a similar assignment in middle school because she was sick and missed a band concert. I was pretty ticked off - - she was REALLY sick (I wouldn’t let her go), and she really wanted to go. The band teacher had a vindictive/controlling streak that came out in other ways, too. D2 went the choir route just to avoid this teacher. </p>
<p>Probably too late for the OP for this, but maybe she could have asked the gym teacher for some alternative phys ed assigment (walking on the track or a treadmill during class?) that she COULD do, since she had some limitations that kept her from doing what the class was doing. A less strenuous fitness activity is better than none… Seems like a reasonable teacher might have gone for that idea.</p>
<p>Once my S had to miss a choir concert due to illness, and got assigned a large paper on the History of Music or some such thing. We were both ticked but what can you do?</p>
<p>D1 didn’t do the paper, and I explained to the band director that she really was sick and shouldn’t be punished with extra work because of it. D1 got a B in band, but it was middle school, so it didn’t matter. I was a “bandie” in high school (almost majored in music in college), so had lots of experience with various bands and orchestras over the years. None of them had a silly rule like that, and I told the band director that.</p>
<p>Not such a good option when high school GPA and grad requirements are on the line, though.</p>
<p>Life is choices. Choose to talk to your teacher, and do the paper to graduate. Or not. It’s a choice. You deal with the consequences if you choose not to talk to the teacher and do the paper.</p>
<p>This isn’t even fundamentally an issue of physical education. As Chedva said, this an issue of basic respect for teachers and superiors who make you do seemingly inane tasks. If I were to skip client meetings because I considered them to be worthless (and for many projects I’ve been on, client meetings pretty much <em>are</em> worthless), I would be fired. I wouldn’t be fired because I missed some crucial information, but I <em>would</em> be fired because I was consistently rude to clients who ultimately have control over my future as a professional.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try to make PE classes more productive, or that we should eradicate PE classes altogether, but what I <em>am</em> saying is that ignoring the situation instead of approaching it in a mature manner is at the crux of the original poster’s problem.</p>
<p>I really believe that the only way to undo behaving in an immature manner is to stand up and show maturity. I agree with the folks who have said that the original poster needs to swallow her pride, schedule a meeting with the PE teacher, say she made an extremely poor choice in ignoring the requirements because she thought they were excessive, and ask whether or not a compromise can be reached.</p>
<p>Hmmm. I just remembered I missed my 7th grade band concert because I broke my wrist and couldn’t play. The teacher was upset with me, but I didn’t receive an alternate assignment!</p>
<p>I’m not encouraging slacking off but I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect consistency from the school. Certainly there is a policy in place that can be looked up and applied. When I had trouble with my legs, I was exempted from gym. No papers or sitting and watching the class. I took extra english classes.</p>