Moving Classes Back Indoors: Winter and the Secondary PE Curriculum

Winter is in front of us and if we have not bowed to it yet, we will soon. That means coming inside and finding ourselves surrounded by four walls and a ceiling. What a change: less room, more noise, and lots of compromises.

But it isn’t all bad. Getting back in the gym can be a relief in some ways. You can feel as if you have more control over your environment. You don’t have to worry about weather and rainy day plans synching with what you were teaching outdoors. More importantly, you don’t have to worry about the possibility of unpleasant situations from bystanders or trespassers.

Frankly, I used to look forward to knowing that I could be heard more easily indoors and could use the gym’s portable blackboard to diagram the strategies and positioning I was teaching. Sadly, my relief was usually short lived. Limited space and intensified noise levels eventually took their toll. Though I loved when the noise of excited kids rose, being in constant noise seemed to increase my stress level. Then, too, when the limited space made it difficult to keep the kids moving and doing what they enjoyed the whole time we were together, I was not happy. It wasn’t long before addressing that issue became a high priority for me and maybe you, too.

Curriculum Thoughts

I agree that we at the secondary level should focus on lifetime sports and activities, but the reality of winter means that most of those sports need to be put off (except for those among us who have boundless gym space, or small classes, or perfect weather year ’round).

Forget about individual sports. There is just not enough room. But some sports and activities do lend themselves to smaller spaces and will accommodate your classes better. You already know them, I am sure. Others, especially individual sports require space that not many of us have. Forget archery, badminton, pickleball, handball, tennis or golf. Instead, choose units that accommodate everyone and allow students to move throughout the class period. Things that have worked well for me include the following:

Fitness activities and self-testing activities do not necessitate a gym.
Folk, social, modern, jazz and other rhythmic activities are doable in limited space.
Volleyball can move indoors, but rotating students in and out should be limited.
Basketball, a great indoor sport, can compromise student participation because teams are smaller.

Adapting to the Situation

Most urban schools have large classes, and little space, making it tough to accommodate everyone at once. Take basketball, the last sport I mentioned. Imagine fifty kids in a class with only one gymnasium housing one official size basketball court. What do you do? You have to adapt!

How? Sadly, some teachers simply ask teams or students to sit-out and wait their turn, but because we want to keep our kids moving, we have to find other solutions. One way to start is to work with your colleagues to come up with ideas to relieve the problem. Often, whatever they come up with will mean making a change. They will have to be willing to do that, too. With consensus, you and colleagues can explore your building looking for auxiliary areas that can be used by PE classes. Once found, units have to be planned that can utilize the space safely as well as in an educationally meaningful way. This frees up gym space so that one class can use the entire area for a meaningful unit of an activity that is best done with plenty of space.

Here’s an example using basketball. Many of my students loved the sport and looked forward to playing it. When there aren’t enough courts for all students to participate at once, it’s no fun for the kids or the teachers. If your gym is like the one I taught in – and it probably is – it was laid out with one modified full court or two half courts on either side of a folding door that split the gym. Having a split gym would be great if one class got to use both sides but that was not going to happen. Two classes were scheduled. So, how can two classes, meeting simultaneously with 36 or more students in each class, remain active throughout the period? Clearly, there weren’t enough half courts to accommodate everyone, much less the students’ desire to play full court basketball. If we wanted to provide what they loved, we had to do something different.

What Can You Do That Is Different?

You need to free up the gym by using alternate space and here’s a few suggestions of ways you can do it:

Do you have outdoor BB courts? If you do, you probably also have a bunch of kids willing to play outdoors in sweats or street clothes if they know they can play full court or full time. You might even relax the rule that they change clothes for the unit if they are willing to go outdoors to play.
Can you suggest staggering the use of the gym for a month or so, having one class take the entire facility for BB while the other uses an alternate space for a different unit – say a fitness unit in the weight room, or a dance unit on the auditorium stage, or an aerobic or tumbling unit in a cleared cafeteria or classroom? Of course, the deal needs to be that they give you back the gym when the month ends and they go elsewhere while your classes get the gym to themselves. This worked in my school after we cleared a classroom and turned it into a weight room, and then used another one for different kinds of floor exercise and dance. When we had three classes meeting at the same time we used the auditorium stage for aerobic dance.
Consider instituting a polar bear class or unit. Believe it or not this appeals to many students! You can offer cross-country training, outdoor basketball, and or continue field sports with the group vacating the gym.
If you simply cannot manage the court space because you have too many kids, create a playing officiating schedule that assigns a different team each day to be responsible for officiating. Teach the student officials to keep in line with play when they are the leading officials and comfort yourself and them that they might not be playing the game, but they are still moving and playing an important role.

In truth, you can use this same strategy during the spring and fall. While some classes are outdoors for field sports, another class can stay indoors and enjoy the way you converted the gym into many badminton courts or pickleball courts.

Summary

To conclude, make time to identify how to keep your students active throughout the period once classes come indoors. Remember, that lessons should have students moving a majority of the time even if they are not in a regulation game situation. If it is too difficult to accomplish, consider changes in the curriculum and in how your department uses its available space. Then once you have some adaptation ideas consider this:

Don’t push for change until you have the lay-of-the-land and a sense of the kind of resistance you might encounter. By anticipating this, you can find reasonable arguments to combat whatever challenges your colleagues present.
Do not set out to this on your own. In many places there is an unspoken expectation that colleagues fall in line with everyone else. When things have been done one way, people tend to want to keep it that way whether it is best for keeping kids moving or not. In short, tread lightly, but DO tread and DON’T give up!

Have a great winter of teaching!