Circle of Life

I write this month’s editorial with a mixture of excitement and great sadness. By the time you read this, if all goes well I will be the proud grandparent of a newly born healthy little girl. This will be my second grandchild. If you are a grandparent or a parent you’ll know how exciting this is. It’s a time of new beginnings, of wonderment and joy, and a reminder of how life goes on despite seemingly never ending stories of tragedies, set backs, and sadness. Simultaneously, just 25 miles from my home, rescuers continue to desperately search for survivors of the horrific landslide that in seconds swept away homes and ended lives alongside the picturesque Stillaguamish River in the tiny town of Oso, Washington.

Both personally and professionally, there seems no escaping a life destined to be a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, thrills and spills, joys and sadness. Last month, I reported a few professional successes and disappointments. A threat to empower ROTC instructors to teach physical education was rejected in California, but a similar proposal loomed in New Mexico. In Ohio, legislators supported a house bill not allowing PE and health to count as electives for graduation, together with a bill counting band, cheerleading, and athletics as physical education. And in my own state of Washington, Highline school district administrators now insist that newly hired elementary PE specialists must also be certified to teach in the classroom if they want permanent teaching contracts.

Brilliant! Let’s plan on using PE specialists to fill in for classroom teachers. That will surely boost test scores, never mind the quality of the PE instruction we can anticipate when classroom teachers take over our gyms. Did these educational leaders take early advantage of WA State’s recent change in the marijuana laws? Certainly, ensuring a quality education for Highline school kids wasn’t foremost on their minds.

As distressing as these events can be, and certainly I respect how stressful they must be for those directly affected, this news shouldn’t surprise us. It’s pretty much cyclical. Just as some school administrators or state legislators try to cut us or reduce our effectiveness, others recognize that kids need physical education to succeed in schools. The Move to Improve Act recently passed by the West Virginia Senate for example, would require middle school students to have PE daily. And just recently, I learned of a private school in Corvallis, OR that for years has required students to participate in daily PE (as well as study music and a second language) and yet graduate some of the best academically prepared and healthy students parents could hope for.

I encourage you to read more about our professional ups and downs as well as access some great teaching and informational documents by perusing the pelinks4u News column. And please, do consider sharing these resources (via email, Facebook or Twitter), with your colleagues. Who knows, you might reignite a passion for our profession long since doused by dopey thinking?