Telling their stories

Possibilities

• Teaching resource for undergrads -entry level reading
• PE Dpt meeting resource - ie discussion starters
• guest editoral - the students voice
• ??

My primary years were the toughest years of my life, however, the memories I have of PE during this period were the easiest to retain. My four siblings and I grew up on the land and the lifestyle without running water or power was a very physical one. There was a lot of violence, alcohol, drugs and fear at home. Eventually, I lost my voice, my confidence to speak up, communicate my feelings and speak publically. My actions and body language became my voice and this sometimes meant violent episodes at school. PE met my need to communicate safely most of the time.

My favourite P.E. activity was simply rolling down the large hill that joined the two fields. Large lines of girls would form at the top of the hill, followed by squeals of delight as we hurtled down the hill as fast as we could to determine a winner, then race back to the top to start it all over again. I doubt school children would even be allowed to do this anymore for fear of them getting hurt.

Teachers have had a significant influence on the way I participated in P.E through my schooling years. When I was overweight I could tell that my P.E teachers would subconsciously underestimate my fitness skills from the way I looked

Another confusing message I was getting that was that P.E. was not an important subject; my parents were not concerned with my marks or non participation in P.E. as the subject wouldn’t “take me anywhere in life”.

The strong relationship that I had with my P.E teacher forced me to apply myself to and enjoy the subject as I wanted to compete with and impress him.

I actually liked this style because she showed she genuinely wanted the best out of the class for me. She would praise people after they corrected the movements and I noticed the praise made children really want to do their best and have fun. Bigger children got praised for what they did get done and not yelled at for what they did not get done, so they always wanted to do aerobics opposed to doing cross country or swimming. If anyone laughed at someone else she would growl at them. The teacher really gave me the notion that she cared for us and, therefore, I really liked participating.

Regular P.E. lessons were now highly competitive, while this may have been great for the girls who were physically active outside school as well as in P.E. class, but for me, and a few others, this made P.E. a nightmare. In the class before P.E., I began to feel the dread that came along with not having a note to excuse me, knowing full well that after the ritual of getting changed the choosing of teams would commence.

PE in New Zealand felt exclusive. I felt like my only option was to sit on the side-lines watching the supposed sportier children play. From day one classmates would ask me if I could speak English and tell me to go back home, and none of the teachers would ever pull them up on it. I recall once asking to play netball, and the teacher told me, over enunciating her words as if she thought I was deaf or a non-English speaker, that the girls needed practice for their after school game so I could just watch. It felt like only those in sport teams were offered resources and any attention.

This is where P.E. began to change for me… With the absence of regular training and the onset of puberty, the once fit young body that I had began to change into something I no longer recognised. P.E. class was now regularly scheduled and uniforms were to be worn or detention was given. This was a big change from all the freedom that participating in physical activity had previously given me.

It was also assumed that other Asian children and I had no physical inclination apart from playing badminton. We had a page in our report card for PE, those who did well in sport got a lot of good feedback while those who did not participate only got a comment on whether we were punctual and remembered to bring our PE uniform.

PE was my only therapist at the time and at this stage we had it every day, so I had a therapy session for free every day! Offloading my anger and fear on the field

Despite the less memorable experiences I had in PE, I do believe it deserves a significant space in the New Zealand curriculum. However, I do not see the point in PE unless teachers are more aware of the hidden curriculum that can make PE painful for many students. There is more to just PE than learning how to play a popular sport well, or being physically fit.

They had all the special perks that come with being a high school sports star, special uniforms to clearly display their physical ability, and they were held in high regard by the P.E. teachers, meaning they could pretty much do as they pleased - and they did. I think this probably affected some of the kids that participated in P.E. just as much as it did me - a habitual non-participant – or maybe even more, especially if they were good athletes but not quite good enough to make the top team. It may have been even worse to be just outside of the control circle during P.E. class than where I was - right at the bottom of the heap. They at least tried hard and actively participated but it just wasn’t enough - that must have hurt.

I never had a P.E. teacher that had any weight issues so perhaps they didn’t understand how it felt. But instead of trying to help us all to be fit and healthy they didn’t seem to make much of an effort to try and just left us on the sidelines.This indifference effectively took away our ability and/or drive to be fit and healthy members of class and society

My parents were not at all involved in any way with my PE education. They focussed more on the academic subjects which would eventuate to getting a hiding for not reading or writing a word correctly. So, I liked the fact they were not involved. I saw PE on the top end of my education and it was the main subject I had always been acknowledged in.

Physical education in intermediate was very different to my experience in primary school. Whether or not you got to do physical education depended on how your teacher felt. If we were behind on other subjects then we would completely miss our physical education. I specifically remember having no physical education for three weeks one time due to the teacher not being happy with our attitude and academic input. It felt as though physical education was a reward that was given to us when we behaved.

Free Time PE cultivated an ideal space for the ‘Hidden Curriculum’ to play out where I learnt values, biases, stereotypes that were not intentionally taught by the teacher.

The most embarrassing part of the weekly swimming lesson trip was lining up to get our heads checked for head lice. I remember the teaching scurrying through my hair and shouting out ‘Ooo there’s one’. After that I always felt anxious when I knew it was swimming day. Mum took care of the head lice, but, the shame I felt and the laughter I heard from other kids would always echo in my head when it was swim day and the laughs and comments from other kids took a while to fizzle away. It was hard because I was a good swimmer and would swim nearly every day at the river against the flow so I felt disadvantaged from excelling in something due to the effect that the class shaming had on my zeal and enjoyment for it. Again, I think the teacher just thought of me as a child and that I wouldn’t be affected so much by the humiliating head lice exposure.

Everyone laughed and sneered which made me feel inferior image wise and I guess I had no awareness of my anatomy at that age until those remarks came hurling at me. ‘She’s trying to act like a boy’ one girl in my class said and after that I always wore my shirt even if it was scorching hot. Surprisingly, the teachers never talked to me about my anatomy, femininity, or masculinity when I exposed my body and I wonder now if they thought I was just a young kid so it was innocent and nothing to fuss about. The boys acted all weird at first looking at me as if they had seen an alien walk on the field to play, but, that did not scare me off at all it just fed my determination to play in a rough environment. After a few games I could choose whose team I wanted to play in and I would be accepted. I was use to hard knocks at home and now I had a time and space to give it all back.

As teams were chosen one by one some would have looks of sheer delight on their faces at having been chosen while some of us knew we would either reluctantly be picked last, or be surplus to requirement and not picked at all. Not only did the classmates know who should be included in the game, the teacher was also keenly aware of who she wanted to be teaching. I had the same teacher for the four years I attended this school and she never bothered to remember my name, which made me feel unimportant and that because I was not a star athlete I didn’t matter.

They had all the special perks that come with being a high school sports star, special uniforms to clearly display their physical ability, and they were held in high regard by the P.E. teachers, meaning they could pretty much do as they pleased - and they did. I think this probably affected some of the kids that participated in P.E. just as much as it did me - a habitual non-participant – or maybe even more, especially if they were good athletes but not quite good enough to make the top team. It may have been even worse to be just outside of the control circle during P.E. class than where I was - right at the bottom of the heap. They at least tried hard and actively participated but it just wasn’t enough - that must have hurt.

Despite my rocky end to P.E. after such a beautiful beginning, I still strongly believe that P.E. can and does teach amazing life skills and that there should always be a place for P.E. alongside academia. A recent experience of watching my children during their scheduled primary school P.E. session - one struggling and one excelling- brought back a barrage of mixed feelings about my own P.E. history.

This meant that skipping class, forgetting P.E. gear or getting notes from parents to excuse us from participation were valid and became a very easy way to not participate. However, this is probably what causes issues with other students, because we didn’t often participate or think that P.E. was an important subject; this left us at the mercy of the other students who always participated and took P.E. very seriously both as a school subject and in their lives outside of school. Without meaning to - by not thinking P.E. was not important - we probably made those students upset and undermined their choices.

When I first started secondary school I was significantly overweight and thus didn’t enjoy the subject as I was extremely self-conscious of my body and embarrassing myself in front of my fellow class mates.. On the other hand after I had lost a lot of weight and got selected for the schools 1st xv I began to experience P.E in a completely different way. I began to look at P.E as another fun opportunity to be active and aid me in becoming the strongest version of myself. I also became extremely motivated to beat my previous year’s performances on annual fitness tests such as the beep test

I believe that people incorrectly assume that in order to benefit from P.E you must enjoy and love doing it, whereas this is completely overlooked in other subjects such as maths or English where most students who take part don’t enjoy it but they still learn a lot.

Through sport and games it was constantly reiterated that we were to respect each other and each other’s space. We passed the ball to everyone as the weaker players were given a few more coaching points and were encouraged by the teacher. She was sensitive enough to do this without singling them out. We picked this up from the teacher and started getting the whole class involved and we encouraged one another to do better and praised good play.

I participated in physical activity at primary level which was things like jump jam, basketball, touch and so on and continued through intermediate developing basic FMS which I found that I was successful or really good at that particular subject compared to other subjects like English or maths giving me a huge confidence boost. This influenced my decision on carrying on with physical education in college.

I was extremely fortunate to be taught by great teachers from year 9 right up to year 13 and if not for them I would not be studying physical education at university and in the hopes of becoming a PE teacher myself one day. These teachers I have had at secondary school taught physical education to myself and others in a way we could understand for example they would use a lot of examples through what we could relate to with the sports we play, for me it was rugby. They also taught us metaphorically to help us through PE in anatomy, biomechanics, and so on to help us really understand and remember. I found school very difficult and struggled in other subject classes like maths but because of my PE teacher using these techniques of teaching to help me understand I was successful with PE and also because they saw in me what I failed to see in myself by pushing me to work harder.

I especially found that I took enjoyment in putting theory into to a practical setting. For example we learnt human anatomy looking at movement and the muscle groups then next class session we booked the weights gym and put what we looked at into practice.

Other students in my class would have experienced PE differently to me in terms of the relationship with the teacher. My teacher in PE played ‘favourites’ in my class whether he knew it or not. All high top level athletes in the college would get priority if they had any concerns or questions involving assessments as opposed to students who just took PE as a subject of interest with no top levelled sporting back round.

The teacher acted as a facilitator rather than a dictator, and was very approachable. She was always looking for us to discover ourselves while indulging in physical activity and keeping a positive learning environment that included every single student. I don’t think there was a single student who didn’t enjoy that class and enjoyed the same sort of learning.

We didn’t learn enough ‘about’ movement where we looked at the biomechanics of movement etc. however we definitely learnt about the socio-cultural implications of different parts of society when we got to interact with the underprivileged students. I am forever grateful for having had such a great PE experience during my formative years as the values have stayed with me to this date.

The teacher was authoritative, girls and boys were always made to play separately in their own groups, games like dodgeball were played, which got pretty competitive amongst some of the girls at times and the teacher usually took on the role of a referee. I didn’t quite buy into the whole thing as I didn’t see the point of it. It was something that didn’t quite fit with my prior learning of values.

I feel that the PE teacher just wanted for us to be engaged and happy kids, though ‘happiness’ was quite a subjective matter here. I didn’t enjoy the PE classes as I felt it was unfair to have us differentiated from the boys and considered as the weaker sex. This was not only reflected in our PE lessons but also in the exam where the boys had to do a certain number of push –ups and the girls were told to do sit up crunches

However, it is interesting to see how the underlying curriculum of inequality of gender that was projected, motivated me to physically train hard in order to be able to compete with the boys