Gym Class Struggle

Cosgrove, 51, who was named a National Teacher of the Year by NASPE in 1999, says he teaches juggling because "it's a cross-lateral activity," a phrase I'm quite sure has never rolled off Mr. Anderson's tongue. Cosgrove reinforces positively and endlessly: I like the way Clayton is helping Mr. Cos. I want you to write down two things you really liked about your partner's juggling and one thing you think he should or could add to make the routine even better. Practice makes perfect if you practice perfectly. His classes are models of organization and efficiency. There were 50 students in the small gym, but he had two other P.E. teachers to help him. The kids were subtly divided according to their ability, and each group was given encouragement. Cosgrove began the class with warm-up drills, Michael Jackson's Beat It pounding through the gym. Then the students stretched. Then they named the muscles they were stretching. When the 50-minute session was over, the class stacked the pins and balls and scarves, arranging the latter into their pink, orange and yellow piles, except for the bandito who kept a scarf in the air by blowing under it. He finally put it away, and then the kids lined up and marched out, passing another class of 50 that was marching in.

A few miles down the road I watched eighth-grade students at Rockwood Valley Middle School propel themselves on scooters through an obstacle course dotted with balloons, hoops, nets, rings and mats. The goal of the drill was not only to provide the students with aerobic exercise but also to help them learn about blood circulation. "You're passing through the tricuspid valve and the right ventricle!" yelled the teacher, Sue Tillery, above the blaring of The Trampps's Disco Inferno. Then Tillery led her charges through a rigorous 15-minute circuit that included step aerobics, dribbling a soccer ball, shooting a basketball, jumping rope and jogging, all the while keeping tabs on their heart rate through the monitors strapped to their chests. In another section of Tillery's school, kids in gym class were having a scavenger hunt; in another, they were throwing real darts at boards hung on a wall near teachers' offices.

But do Cosgrove's and Tillery's classes represent gym in the real world? (Do darts and scavenger hunts, one might ask, represent gym at all?) I suggested to both teachers that while their techniques were superb, those techniques wouldn't necessarily be applicable in other schools. Both teach in well-heeled districts where parental support is high, resources are abundant—Tillery's heart monitors, which cost about $200 each, are budgeted for about one out of every two eighth-graders in the district—and students are attentive. Would anyone hand out darts to kids in, say, New York City, where public schools are at 130% occupancy? That means gymnasiums are being used for lunch and math, never mind juggling and step aerobics. In New York City fewer than 40% of high schools have their own athletic fields, and virtually no middle or elementary school does; Cosgrove's elementary school, by contrast, has not only athletic fields but also a nature trail on which his gym classes can run and power-walk.

But Tillery and Cosgrove subscribe to the premise that good gym classes can be taught anywhere. "Wherever you teach, you have to sell your program," says Tillery, a NASPE National Teacher of the Year in 1994. "Good gym classes don't just happen. Teachers make them happen. Kids want to have their love of play validated. That's what good gym classes do."

A few weeks later I watched Joe Featherston, a craggy 52-year-old veteran of the New York City public school system, work magic amid the teeming mass of humanity at Benjamin N. Cardozo High in Queens. "Tank ya for yer help," he tells a student who has put away equipment. That's Featherston's version oil like the way Clayton is helping Mr. Cos. In a basement classroom at Cardozo, a space about half the size of the Oak Brook gym, Featherston keeps up a relentless stream of chatter as he leads 40 juniors and seniors in an aerobic workout, conducted amid a cluttered landscape of secondhand weight machines and treadmills. "Hey, hey, Jones Beach is three months away. You wanna look good out dare, right?" "Hey, you got a big gut and maybe catsup heah on yer shirt, and ya go for a job interview. Ya tink yer gonna get it?" "Hey, No-Doz and coffee and all dat crap? It's no good. Ya gotta exercise!" Later, a senior in the class, Ryan Goldstein, will allow that "some kids think Mr. Featherston is a little annoying, but if he didn't keep on us, we wouldn't get enough out of this class."

Upstairs, in the regular gymnasium, about 120 kids, spread over four courts, are playing volleyball. It's not the best atmosphere in which to play the game, but it's not the worst either. In a classroom Shirley Rushing, a former professional dancer who's on the Cardozo phys-ed staff, is leading a couple dozen girls (no boys signed up) in a modern dance class. In a small auxiliary gym Neil Baskin is instructing a class of about 50 in...yoga? "I got into it, so I might as well teach it, right?" says Baskin, a gym teacher. "I mean, why just roll out the balls? That sucks, right?" Good gym classes don't just happen. Teachers make them happen.

Cosgrove, Tillery, Featherston and Baskin all practice what is known as the New Phys Ed. Movement is emphasized over skills. ("Touch football in gym is valuable not as an end unto itself," says Stephen Coulon, a professor of physical education at Springfield [Mass.] College, "but because it teaches the concepts of chase, flee and dodge.") Becoming proficient at specific sports is no longer a goal. ("We don't teach basketball anymore," says Bobbie Harris, a project director in the Wichita State sports sciences department. "We use basketball to teach kids to be active.") The curriculum is geared to serve all the students, not just the athletically gifted ones. (Remember the climbing rope that did in George Costanza? Cosgrove has three ropes, two of them with knots in them so everyone can climb a little.) Letting kids pick and choose from a menu of sports replaces the here's-what-we're-doing-today mind-set of traditional gym teachers. ("Variety is the key to making gym class work," says Alexis Smith, a Cardozo senior.) Gym-class games are more cooperative than competitive. ("Physical education is not athletics," says Cosgrove. "Teamwork and cooperation are more important man keeping score. We are looking to find the value in each individual") Needless to say, you won't find standings posted outside Mr. Cos's door.

The New Phys Ed makes a lot of sense. To some degree we were in the Dark Ages back there in Mr. Anderson's class. We did jumping jacks and squat thrusts, but never any stretching or weightlifting. We didn't name the muscle groups. We didn't do cross-lateral activities. We didn't ride scooters through the stations of the heart. For all I know, someone may indeed have gotten pneumonia.

But 40 years later I hold to the premise that the Old Phys Ed, Mr. Anderson's phys ed, made a lot of sense, too. A friend and former classmate of mine, Bob Fink, remembers Mr. Anderson handing him a football to take home so Bob could practice with a neighbor who wasn't adept at throwing. "The fact that he wanted that kid to get better has stuck with me all these years," says Fink. Another former classmate, Angelo Agro, the smartest kid I ever knew but one of the most unathletic, a man who recalls needing a rest stop while running the 50-yard-dash portion of the President's Test, also has pleasant memories of Mr. Anderson's class. "He never made you feel like a turkey even if you were a turkey," says Agro, who's a physician. "You learned fundamentals. You learned about teamwork. For years I watched my own kids get excused from gym class for a hangnail, so I have to think I got a lot more out of gym class than they did. Heck, I played on championship gym-class teams. That's something."

So here's to the men and women with whistles around their necks and gymnasiums full of hormones to keep occupied. Here's to the Cosgroves and the Tillerys and the Featherstons and, especially, to the Mr. Andersons, traces of whom must still exist out there. They can teach; they just happen to teach gym.