Jim’s First Day of Physical Education
Part One: Introduction
I arrived back at my office after finishing lunch. Since I’ve been teaching here at St. Bartholomew’s for so long, my seniority allowed me to choose which lunch period I’d like. I usually choose the late period, as I did again this semester. It runs from 12:35 to 1:25, right after my fourth period class. Personally, I liked the later lunch period since it seemed to shorten the afternoon for me. At this point in my day, I only had two more class periods and then I was done for the day.
I looked at my watch and realized that I still had about ten minutes until the next class began. That should be plenty of time to review the list of students and prepare for the class. I unlocked the door to my office, stepped inside and immediately found the class roster for the fifth period class. As I opened the folder of paperwork on my desk, I thought about all the years that I had been teaching high school physical education, all of them here at St. Bart’s. It’s hard to believe that it’s now 1970, January 3rd to be exact, and that I had been doing this for almost 10 years. Yes, it was somewhat unusual for a female like me to be the primary instructor for a boys P.E. class. I was originally hired to teach the girls, but the male instructor left in the middle of my first year here at St. Bart’s. I had to quickly take over for the girls and boys. There were some initial complaints about a female teaching the boys, being with them in the locker room, observing their showers and such. But the administration seemed to like the results I was getting, and never bothered to hire a male replacement. They did hire another female teacher to teach the girls, and they also very recently hired John to assist me with the boys. But I’ve really been in charge of things for these past 10 years.
I remembered a time when I actually enjoyed teaching P.E. early on in my career. But lately, I had become bored with it. It just seemed like the same thing, over and over again, class after class, semester after semester. And that was especially true on a day like today, the very first day of a new semester. While that first day of class was certainly different, it still became rather boring for me, since the procedure was always the same. We’d review the same procedures, discuss the same rules and answer the same questions each and every semester. Even the boys that I taught all seemed to be the same every semester. There was nothing really striking or different about them.
But as I looked at the list of male students in front of me, I was reminded that this was my very favorite class of physical education to teach each and every year. I actually looked forward to it all year. It was what I had started to call my “last chance” P.E. class. It was always a very small class of boys, and all of them were seniors. As I reviewed the list of names and birth dates in front of me, I saw that all of them were 18 years old, the youngest having turned 18 just a week ago. Normally the boys at St. Bart’s took physical education during their freshmen or sophomore year, just to get it out of the way. After all, the one credit hour for P.E. was a requirement for graduation. Most students didn’t wait until the very last minute to satisfy the P.E. requirement.
But each year, the guidance counselor’s office reserves this class for seniors only, just to make sure that all of them had the opportunity to earn their P.E. credit and graduate. So for whatever reason, all of the seniors in this class waited until now to take P.E. Over the years, I’ve heard different reasons for waiting this long. Some students were college-bound overachievers and loaded up their schedules for the first few years with more important core classes. Others simply procrastinated and waited until now, when it was almost too late. But most of the boys in this class didn’t take P.E. earlier because they were trying to avoid it for as long as possible. Some of them might have even been hoping to find a way to skip it altogether. St. Bart’s generously allowed students that participate in team sports to count their sport as the necessary P.E. graduation credit. So I knew that none of the boys in this class played any sports during high school, otherwise they wouldn’t need to be here. Most of them weren’t very athletic, and didn’t like the idea of forced, regimented exercise. And some of them talked to other students, and didn’t like some of the rules and procedures that I enforce in my P.E. classes. Some of them are actually fearful of physical education, since certain aspects of it are embarrassing.
Well, the joke is on all of them now. They all must have a P.E. credit hour in order to graduate, and this is their last semester before graduation – their last chance. They’re all finally mine now!
The other thing I really liked about this class is that it occupies the fifth and sixth periods of the day -- a double period. Normally, students earn their P.E. credit hour in a single period class that meets every day for an entire year, two semesters. But since these boys have waited until the very last semester, we have to use two class periods back to back to earn that same credit hour. That means that instead of a normal class period of only 55 minutes, these boys will be with me every day from 1:30 until 3:25, that’s almost two full hours! That extra class time is what really makes this fun. Each day I can work them harder and longer than I normally would – making them really work up a sweat. And the extra time even comes in handy today, during class orientation. It allows me to really take my time with the boys and go over the class rules and procedures. The boys don’t know it yet, but instead of just reviewing the rules today, they’ll actually get to see what a normal class period is like. Starting today, I’ll make them all regret that they waited this long to take P.E. By the end of the day, I guarantee that they’ll all wish they had taken it as a freshmen.
Just then I heard my assistant John walk into the office.
“Have a good lunch, Margaret?” he asked.
“Yes, mine was good, how about yours, John” I replied.
“It was just OK, I thought the fish needed something,” John said.
“You mean flavor?” “Yeah, something like that,” John replied with a laugh. “I see you’re going over the roster. This is the last chance class of seniors again, right?”
“Yes, that’s right, so we’ll have a busy two hours ahead of us. I guess you remember this same class from last year.”
“I sure do, that was a bit of a surprise last year. At least I know what to expect this time, since this is my second year at St. Bart’s.“
John Moore joined me as my physical education assistant in the fall 1968 semester, so this is only his fourth semester at the school. We have a pretty good working relationship and we’ve actually become very good friends. John had served his time in the army before joining us here at St. Bart’s. He’s fairly young, I think he’s only around 23 years old, about 11 years my junior, and he’s friendly and pretty good working with the students. I actually think he’s a great role model for the boys, since he did his duty in the military and has now resumed civilian life. He’s also in great shape, which sets a fine example for the boys.
“Will the school nurse be helping again this year?” John asked.
“Yes, John, I asked Nurse Draper to come by around 2:00, we should be ready for her by then.”
Just then we heard the bell ring, signaling the end of the fourth period. We should be seeing the students for our next class any time now. I quickly placed my copy of the class roster and other forms into my clip board to prepare for class. I grabbed the thin stack of 3x5 locker assignment cards that I had prepared this morning during my free period. I also prepared a second clip board for John which I handed to him as I stood up.
“Here you go, John, your copy of the class roster.”
“Thanks, Margaret,” he replied with a smile. He quickly scanned the list to see how large the class would be this year. “Only 17 boys this year,” he said. “That’s a little smaller than last year, isn’t it?”
“It varies by a couple of boys either way. I think we had 19 last year,” I answered. “Either way, it’s small enough where we can give these seniors our undivided attention.”
As we were talking, the doors to the gym opened and we saw our next class of boys begin to file into the gym. Since it was such a small class, it seemed like just a trickle of students as they entered the gym, instead of the larger mad rush of boys that we see for a normal class period. As we watched more boys straggle into the gym, we decided that it was time to go out and meet the “last chance” senior class of 1970.
“Time to get started,” I said to John. We both walked out of the office that was adjoining the gym with our clipboards in hand. As usual, John and I are both wearing our coach’s uniform, consisting of light tan coaches’ shorts and a navy blue polo shirt. And most importantly, we both had our trusty whistles hanging around our necks. Just as we began to walk toward the group of boys, we heard the bell ring again, signaling the beginning of the fifth period.
