Graceful Parenting in Austin

Blue Eyes, Baby Girl and I went to watch Noel participate in the University of Texas‘ Volleyball Playday this weekend. Noel has been playing volleyball with other 5th graders after school to prepare for the playday. The kids did drills with the UT volleyball team and scrimmaged with other schools. Then they gathered for a talk from Dolly Lamdin, a senior lecturer in UT’s Kinesiology and Health Education program. After hearing her talk, I felt the little girl inside me smile, with understanding and healing, because I SO BELIEVED in what she was saying and I was SO GRATEFUL that she was saying it…

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The banner in the recreation center read “Physical Education - Learning to live an active and healthy life.” This was not the Physical Education of my youth.

My athletic career died a very early death. I played softball, soccer and tennis on neighborhood teams in elementary school and I dreamed of playing on a tennis or volleyball team in high school. But in middle school, the teams got more competitive, tryouts were required and everything changed. I wasn’t bad, but I was awkward and nervous and didn’t do well in tryouts. I tried out for pretty much everything, it would be embarrassing to list them all, but I didn’t make any team.

So, I was regulated to the regular PE class and that was OK, I wasn’t looking for a career in sports or anything, but this is how PE worked. The PE teachers were coaches for the official school teams, which were important, and the PE class was for baby sitting. One PE teacher had us walk the track every day for months at a time while she laid on the bleachers getting a tan. Sure, we played tennis, with eight girls on each court, randomly hitting each other in the head with balls. Then, of coarse, there was dodgeball. Dodgeball is the lazy PE teacher’s ideal sport. No instruction required, no supervision necessary. And playing dodgeball ensures that none of these non-important-team-kids will take any more PE than required.

But the worst was swimming. Our high school had a pool and the PE teachers demanded that we use it. The girls protested because it was a pain to get wet in the middle of the day, when you had only seven minutes to shower and fix your hair before your next class. But they were not interested in our whining, so every girl had to swim unless they had a note from their parents with a specific medical reason why they could not swim. And in that case, they made you get your hair wet anyway, to ensure that this loophole wouldn’t be abused. And do you know how they taught swimming? They said ‘get in the water and swim!’ I couldn’t swim, not even one length of the pool, so I chose an outside lane and spent a lot of the time hanging on to the side, catching my breath. Well, at least my hair was wet, that is what really mattered.

This story sounds so strange to me now, like it is out of some Charles Dickens novel about an orphanage run by an oppressive and slightly mad headmaster. It’s good material for a movie or at least a TV mini-series.

According to Dolly Lamdin, this kind of PE is in the past. Today, PE is about encouraging kids to be healthy and active in ways that they will take with them when they are adults. It doesn’t separate the athlete from the non-athlete in the sixth grade, with real coaching and teaching only for the select few. It recognizes that everyone can find and learn something that works for them. And it recognizes that, with our mostly sedentary lifestyles and obesity on the rise, the regular PE class is really important.

The little girl inside of me smiled and breathed a little easier. I imagined dodgeball being handed a pink slip and walking slowly, with his head down, outside the back door of the school.

Noel is going into middle school next year, the beginning of the time when the separation begins. Her 5th volleyball group was open to all kids, but in middle school the tryouts will begin and the ‘regular’ PE class will have the kids who are left. It will be interesting to see if the theory at the university is the same as the action in the schools. The little girl inside of me hopes so.