If you thought all teachers have it bad, take a look at the ridiculousness that is Physical Education. The current P.E. teacher for my Small Learning Community has classes exponentially larger than his indoor peers. Just try providing a meaningful learning experience to a class that is 108 students large (actual class size for a current P.E. class). On top of this, be aware of the other P.E. classes of equal size congregating in one of the dilapidated gyms or on the asphalt or field. Arm this overwhelmingly large body of 9th and 10th graders with soccer and basketballs and imagine the ensuing chaos.

Sounds bad? That’s not even the half of it. The real problem right now is the number of ditchers. Because there are so many kids in the P.E. area it’s prime ditching real estate – most teachers don’t know who their students are (their rosters are several pages long) and it’s an all too easy task of simply blending in. On a random day our P.E. teacher did a count of students that were ditching and acting as a part of his class. Final count? 66! We’re now talking about upwards of 200 students per teacher (ten times the size of a freshman English class)! Additionally, though I don’t understand the reasons (probably under the auspices of “campus safety”) our school locks the P.E. area once classes are in session each day. You have this gigantic mob of students not getting exercise done, you have the ditching riff raff (usually a mish mash of honeymoon couples looking for a place to make out, taggers, crew members, and generally disenfranchised members of our campus), a few burnt out teachers, and a couple of shifty-eyed security guards clutching radios for backup at a moment’s notice. The situation seems not only like a waste of time (considering that students are required to take two years of P.E. – we are concerned about the student’s health, after all), but a situation full of dangerous potential.

This isn’t physical education. This is a holding pen for our youth.