By Steve Jefferies (Admin) on Friday, June 01, 2001 - 03:31 pm: Edit

Recently Phil Lawler informed us of the positive media attention his school's physical education program had received. Phil received the following two letters from parents who had read about the Naperville Junior High School physical education program:

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Mr. Lawler -

Kudos to your PE program. I read the report on the Madison PE program
and was moved to drop you an e-mail - something I do not do often.

In Jr. High and High School I was one of the slow kids, physically. I
was not obese, just plain slow. I remember my PE Teacher shouting, when
it was my turn to run the 100 yard dash, "Oh, Reynolds is up, someone
get me a calendar to time him!" I learned to hate PE. Through High
School and College, I "let myself go" physically, hating to participate
in sports, and that turned into a hatred of exercise. When I was 28,
and saw what I had become, and I saw another out-of-shape friend suffer
a heart attack at 32, I was motivated to exercise, bring my blood
pressure to normal, lose 70 lbs back to a normal weight, and have
learned to enjoy exercise. I am 31 now, doing well, and in the best
shape of my life. I wish I was this way all my life.

I believe if I, and others like me, participated in a program such as
the one you have at Madison, we would not have had to suffer the
ridicule in school, and most importantly having to suffer life in an
out-of-shape body, wondering if your heart can make it past 40. Your
program is LONG overdue nationwide and can make a DRAMATIC impact in
children's lives.

Keep up the good work. I hope my children will have the privelege of
participating in a Physical Education program similar to the one at
Madison.

Mike Reynolds,
Tualatin OR

****
Phil,

Thank you for your quick reply to my mail. To answer your question, I am a
concerned parent, although I am coincidentally a teacher. (I work in an
early intervention program with disabled newborns to 3 year olds, not with
grade or middle schoolers.)

I have read all of the articles and several related ones about legislation
and PE 4Life. Our older son will start middle school next year. There is a
good chance that our middle school's PE class will be pure failure and
misery for him, as he is probably the least athletic/physical boy in his
entire 5th grade. I was the same way and it took about 10 years for me to
find a way to exercize that I enjoyed and that did not resurrect the
feelings of dread and complete incompetency that I carried from PE classes.
Now I love to work out, via kickboxing classes, weight lifting, hiking, etc.
And, at age 48, I weigh a little less than I did in high school, when I was
at the pinnacle of my unfit days. Anyway, I assumed that my son would just
have to go through a similar path, maybe worse because he is a boy. As a
family we hike, bike, ski, and swim together. He recently went to a health
club with us and was allowed to use the cardio machines. He really enjoyed
them and chose to exercize an extra 20 minutes instead of going to the kid's
room.

I would love to get our school district to adopt your ideas and approach. I
will show them the articles and take it from there.

A question, if you know- do you know of any schools in the San Francisco
Bay Area that are using this approach?

Thanks again,
Karen Mathon