Give Me Dodgeball or Give Me Death
NEIRAD enilno edition
Load printer friendly version
“I'm disappointed,” junior Amy Sanborn said. “It’s not fair,” senior Becca D’Andrea said. Common responses heard from disappointed students no longer permitted to choose their gym classes for the first time this year.
The schedules are confusing enough to decipher. But this year, students were even more perplexed when they discovered gym classes and teachers had already been assigned first semester.
“I can’t do dodge ball now,” junior Scotty Waters said. Waters, along with many students, feels it is unfair freedom to choose has been revoked.
The change was put into play to accommodate the computer system.
“Our department needed to give class rosters to guidance ahead of time because of the new system, Aspen,” physical education teacher Jared Cross said. The advance planning ensures students satisfy the P.E. and health requirements for the year.
Coach Jeff Brameier said the new system has increased efficiency in scheduling the more than 1,300 students enrolled at DHS. “It becomes an issue of running down those students to make sure they have a class,” Coach Brameier said.
The P.E. department as a whole believes this change is a constructive one that has made their jobs as teachers more effective. Class sizes are more balanced and Cross believes it will encourage students to be more diverse in their athletic activities and encourage them to “become more physically active in their lives.”
Students have yet to be sold on the benefits. “Choosing our gym classes is something we have always been able to do. Now I’m stuck in classes I don’t want and gym is going to be far less enjoyable,” senior Andy Brewer said.
Underclassmen are customarily the ones who do not always get their desired gym class when classes fill up. This enables upperclassmen to get the classes they have eagerly looked forward to taking for their last year. “I’m a senior,” Brewer said,” I should be taking dodge ball three out of the four quarters.”
Students feel there should be a way to make gym class choice compatible with the new Aspen operating system. “I think that they were just trying to eliminate some confusion,” junior Lee Bolton said. “But it totally inconveniences the students.”
Bolton said that if athletes whose sports are in season are placed in the weight room, “it throws off their after school training.”
For many students, it’s the aspect of not having friends in their assigned class that upsets them most. During previous years students appreciated being able to exercise the option to have friends in their gym classes: a perk not available in academic classes.
“I know a bunch of people who have one or no friends in their gym class and are taking classes they don’t want or need to be in,” Bolton said. In past years if students ended up in a primary academic class they didn’t want, the disappointment was offset by being in the gym class with friends.
As negative as the reactions have been, the P.E. staff still strongly believes that in the long run, the new policy will benefit both themselves as well as their classes. “I just want all the students to know that they were not being punished in any way,” Coach Cross said. “This new policy is in the best interest of all students at DHS.”
(For more information on the Aspen grading system, see Christian Nielsen’s article.)
