….setting the pace and raising the bar.

As we approach the end of the school year, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect back on our PE program over the past two years.

We made the decision to go to a five day per week program at the beginning of the 2008/09 school year.  At the time, our new facility was not quite ready, and teaching PE in a classroom was a real challenge!  We were not quite sure how the students would react to the new program format.  We believe it has been a tremendous success.  The students have embraced an everyday PE program enthusiastically.

As one would imagine, there have been growing pains.  To mention a few changes, we reduced Kindergarten classes from 45 to 3o minutes after the first year.  This move helped us keep their attention span for the entire class period.  We also significantly revamped our performance benchmarks to reflect the actual learning and skill progression our students are demonstrating with such a comprehensive PE program. There will be many more changes in the future as we strive to deliver the best PE experience to our children. 

We basically had three objectives when we adopted a five day per week program.  One, our students would see obvious health benefits with daily physical activity and instruction.  The results of our Health Fitness Challenge testing support the fact that our students are showing dramatic improvement in all areas of their health fitness.  Second, our students would develop the necessary physical skills to participate in a lifetime of physical activity.  The fact that we had to revamp our performance benchmarks to reflect the actual skills our students are developing supports this objective.  Third, we wanted to see the benefits of our program show up in the classroom as well.  In other words, daily PE would positively correlate with improved academic performance.  Though this objective is hard to quantify at this time, our classroom teachers would say that qualitatively they see the benefits in terms of improved concentration, reinforcement of key concepts in the areas of math and science, and enhanced social skills. 

Now that our students have experienced an everyday PE program, it would be hard to imagine a world where our students receive anything less.  I know most schools in America only provide PE one day per week, and I am aware of the reasons why.  We are very fortunate at Palmetto Prep to offer a program that the leading health organizations have recommended for several years.  We recognize the importance of both physical and mental development.  When you think about it, in one year I interface with my students as much as students across America interface with their PE teacher over their entire elementary school years (6 years!).  That is a sobering fact.

I am proud of our students.  They embrace change and new experiences with an open mind.  They deserve nothing but the best and I believe we always have that in mind at Palmetto Prep.  Thank you for another rewarding school year.