Physical Education

Like most of the readers out there, I never thought teaching phy. ed. was that difficult of a job. One of my favorite quotes about gym teachers is this beauty, "Do you think gym teachers sit around and think, 'I want to teach, but I don't want to read. How about kick ball for 40 years!'". Jim Gaffigan (Larry Johnson in Super Troopers) gave us that nugget of what I used to think was pretty accurate. I mean really, all you do is let a bunch of kids run around and make sure no one gets hurt, let the kids play games, you have nothing to really teach to them, you're there for supervision and guidance, right? As I learned yesterday, this isn't the case.

With my mom needing to substitute for another teacher at her school, I was asked to substitute teach for her physical education classes. I of course said I would because I am broke and I need the money. When she told me the kids were in the bowling unit, I figured I would have to do nothing, and the day would fly by. Just let them bowl and make sure no one gets hurt doing anything stupid is what I thought the day would entail. I was wrong. I was teaching at a private school, the largest class probably had 21 kids in it, so it's not like I had a throng of kids to supervise, plus the size of the "gym" is about 50'x30', so all of the kids were well within my vision. In fact, I didn't have to turn my head to see all of the kids. My schedule went something like this; from 7:45-10:45 I had the following classes (in order) 5th, 4th, 3rd, 1st, Kindergarden, 2nd. I then had a 5 minute break, had 7th grade for an hour, lunch, and then 6th grade from 12:30-1:30. Eigth grade would have been next, but they were able to go to a real bowling alley yesterday with my mom (I then had to watch the class she was substituting in for the last period of the day, but that's neither here nor there).

The half hour classes were fine. After I called roll and two classes watched a short bowling video, there was only about 18 minutes left for them to bowl. The half hour goes by quickly, especially when the younger kids need help with scoring the frames. The hour long classes seemed to take forever. I was ridiculously bored, and all I do all day is sit in my room, watch TV and surf the net, so it takes a lot to make me bored. The 6th and 7th graders had no problem bowling, no problem scoring, and had no questions to ask me. I simply sat and watched kids bowl with rubber balls, rolling them on 30 foot pieces of carpeting which were designed to look like bowling lanes, and hitting 10 plastic pins, I wanted to pluck all the hair from my body!

See, an easy day, right? I think that if I was to do that for... not 40 years, not 20 years, not 1 year, not 1 month, but 1 week I would go CRAZY!

The younger kids would come up to me all the time and ask questions which didn't even have anything to do with bowling, or get mad because things weren't going there way, or just tell me about jewelry they got in Mexico, it was just annoying. Plus, I don't know how gym teachders can come up with curriculum which will keep kids involved and... well, not happy, but content for all 9 years they are taking gym at a private school. It's amazing to me that more gym teachers don't go crazy after a while, or at least deaf from all of the screaming which goes on.

In a "desk job" you have different things coming to you if not daily, probably weekly, for sure monthly. As a gym teacher, you do the same thing for weeks at a time, for 40 years. You see the kids as kindergardeners and then watch them grow up and go to high school. Just like that, 9 years of your life is gone. Before you know it, you have the children of some of the students you used to have. You get a constant reminder of your mortality and aging everyday. It would be too much for me to handle. I give nothing but credit and have nothing but respect for those who are physical education teachers after my experience. You really don't know how hard it is and how demanding it would be until you do it, even for a day.

-Until next time...