E before P: No Exceptions

The New Norm for Physical Education Post COVID-19

As many schools in the UK remain closed due to COVID-19, I sit in a very fortunate position: with my PE Department, in an open College, with currently over 300 students on campus. We have lessons, laughter and a solid sense of community, and we also have a ‘new norm’.

To be open is a privilege, to be able to engage with students in person, a total joy. If ever there was a time where teachers found new love for their subject it is now. But it hasn't been a case of open the doors, put the net up, grab a ball and racket, and go for your life; far from it.

Never before has so much focus been placed on the ‘E’ in PE.

To give some context:

We had 1 weeks’ notice of reopening to work with the new guidelines:

1. No ‘object’ contact (that's no balls, weights, equipment. FULL STOP)
2. No physical contact
3. No changing
4. No Swimming
5. Students must not remove their mask
6. Students must be kept 1m apart
7. No Extra-Curricular

With all the restraints in place we had two questions: ‘what do we do, and how do we make this worthwhile for our students?’

I can’t and won’t take credit for the next part - and I won’t lie, I wasn't sad that the curriculum in that moment didn't fall under my remit as Director of Sport. This was where the Dulwich Heads of PE came into their own. We knew that many of the students would return to us with lower levels of fitness having spent 2 weeks in apartment quarantine. We did not know how to deliver a blended lesson to both those students physically present and those still in their home country?

As we began to muddle through the basics and develop the details we focused heavily on what we could do: run, fitness, yoga (so long as every inch of the mats was cleaned after every session), orienteering, dance. Piecing this together into a balanced, motivating, enjoyable and, above all, safe curriculum would be both the challenge and the key.

Enter ‘School to 4K’

A carousel of activities which focuses on giving the students a foundational understanding of how a variety of sports can help them to develop their overall fitness, and contribute to an improvement in a 4k time.

Before COVID-19, we were a traditional sports-focused school; lessons were designed to support the physical development of students, focusing on:

1. Providing students with the skills and confidence to be able to attend CCA clubs
2. Providing the Heads of Sport with students who had a foundation to develop.

Fundamentally the curriculum aimed to feed the Sports teams. But never before had we considered how misguided and backwards that way of thinking was. Now, students were locked in their apartment with no equipment and were unable to leave. What good was their Physical ‘Education’ now? How did their lessons in Basketball, Volleyball, Netball and Rugby benefit them in the confines of an apartment or hotel room?

What did we actually need them to be able to do? Eat well and exercise correctly and deliberately with what they had - their body weight. 

With no sports teams in sight, and nothing on the horizon looking like it might change, we are forced to look down the opposite end of the telescope.

Self-reflection can be painful! Did our Head of Volleyball rely on my eight lessons with the students for our College’s success in pan-Asian tournaments? Could the students spike, dig and serve because of me? Did I have much to offer our 6ft-plus players that they did not already know?

No. No. And no.

We also reflected as a Department. We each agreed: we had failed to provide an education in fitness, health and physical wellbeing. Certainly, our students were part of sports teams and we even sent them ‘Daily Move’ emails while in lockdown, at the same time as providing countless distance-learning lessons. But it felt like too little, too late.

Our students had a gaping hole in their fundamental understanding of health and fitness. Many can shoot ‘3’ like the Splash Brothers, and are happy to spend all their time on the football pitch, but did they know how to take their pulse, improve their agility, or develop their CV fitness outside of directed learning?

This has, and rightly so, led to some challenging and very frank conversations within the department. As PE teachers we are often measured on the success of our teams, not our exam results, so naturally we are reluctant to take time away from our ‘sport and skill centered education’. However, we also can’t ignore that we are failing students if we do not ‘educate’ them in the physical.

We must remember our purpose, and the purpose of sport, to paraphrase David Epstein, we want our students to be ‘birds not frogs’, in lemans terms- generalists not specialists. Students need to be able to jump, catch, strike, and beyond that, strategise, manage, lead and understand, not because that's what they need to be successful in volleyball, but because that is what is needed to be successful in sport, fitness and life. Placing the individual needs of a sport in the driving seat is quite simply placing the cart before the horse.

So how does PE look currently?

Well, it looks like the ‘new norm’: on PE days, students come in to school changed and ready to go (immediately, we gain 20 minutes of lesson time); they sit socially distant with their PE bags (each containing a PE booklet, pen, skipping rope and a tennis ball); then they are escorted to their PE area. The main non-negotiable: wear your mask!

Yoga is simple: they have a mat and that is their space. Others head out for orienteering, and some face a grueling AMRAP, in a mask, in their own space. For our 'onliners', that looks more like an integrated session where they receive some low-ratio theory teaching and some guided feedback working to their individual needs.

In my Distance Learning Year 9 class I have 7 students, 3 who are in Korea - able to get outside and who are on the same time zone - 2 who are in America - facing restrictions on movement, and a 12-hour time difference - and one who is in China, unable to leave his apartment. Physical Education looks very different for each of these students, but not impossible if we focus on the E. Being able to sit and work through their learning with each of them really matters, physically and mentally. Being able to blend them into a lesson, so that they can participate with their peers, or even just to show them their peers outside working hard gives them a sense of belonging. We are essentially providing these students with a tailored education, bespoke to their needs. Naturally, this has placed an extra burden on the department: if we have a 1:7 ratio online for an online Year 9 lesson, we need an extra teacher to teach that class or another Year 9 class in school. But in times of ‘new norms’, the old cries of ‘that is an extra period on my timetable’, can barely be heard. Everyone wants to be involved, everyone sees the opportunity for development.

But more than the details of above, we have found new strategies, new interests and new clarity; we as teachers have been forced to slow down, giving ourselves more time; time to explain heart rates, warm ups and why we are doing these things. We have more time to reflect - reflect on how the students feel, how hard it was, how hard they worked and what THEY want to work on.

As a teacher I have found this overwhelmingly refreshing and motivating, I am once again challenged, challenged to keep up with my students physically and my colleagues pedagogically, but also to slow down, slow down and ensure that we are focusing on the E. I am no longer thinking about how I may stretch my Year 9 Basketballers dribbling skills, because that isn’t what they or the Heads of Sport need. The Heads of Sport need fit, motivated students who can do the additional fitness, strength and nutrition work outside of practice: that is the role of the Physical Education Teacher, not to do the Heads of Sport job badly.

Many friends and former colleagues have told me that their schools can’t possibly implement these measures. My reply is simple, should any of us accept this not becoming the new norm?