Educational Leadership - December 2009/January 2010

heard them say things like, “I’m not good at gym,” or “I’m just not athletic.” I’ve always felt that my mission was to dispel those assumptions. For me, physical activity classes have become less a place for students to learn to throw a softball well, and more a place for them to learn to throw aside some assumptions about themselves and practice taking risks.

development—the place where optimal learning can occur (Nakkula & Toshalis, 2006).

For example, we play volleyball in groups of mixed gender, age, and ability. A student with solid ball-handling skills might be ready to try working with others to get the ball over the net using strategy instead of just slamming it back toward the other team; another student might be struggling to serve underhand,

Challenge by Choice At Parker, we use the Adven-

ture Curriculum for Physical
Education series developed by
Project Adventure
( www.pa.org) as the founda-
tion of much of our program
(Panicucci, 2007; Panicucci,
Constable, Hunt, Kohut, &
Rheingold, 2002–2003). That
organization’s Challenge by
Choice philosophy recognizes
that any activity or goal poses
a different level of challenge
for each person and that
authentic personal change
comes from within. Challenge
by Choice

so I might let him or her throw the ball over the net instead of serving. Although I dread the phrase “I can’t,” I’ve learned to work with it. “You can’t play volleyball?” I respond. “That’s a big statement. Can you throw the ball? Can you help with the rotation? Have you tried learning to serve? To bump? To set?” We start from the beginning, and although not every student will become

Olympian Misty May-Treanor, they often find out they are actually pretty good at something they would never have guessed they would be.

Flying Outside Their Comfort Zone

creates an environment where participants are asked to search for opportunities to stretch and grow during the experience. [Students learn] how to set goals that are in neither the comfort nor the panic zone, but in that slightly uncomfortable stretch zone where the greatest opportunities for growth and learning lie. (Project Adventure, n.d)

Incorporating this viewpoint into our physical education classroom offers a new way of thinking about how to assess students’ needs and how to work in what psychologist Lev Vygotsky called the zone of proximal

The circus art of flying trapeze is a love of mine, and I teach beginners on the weekends. For the past two years, I’ve brought my advisory class to the trapeze school for an end-of-year field trip. Last year Theo, an energetic and popular 8th grade boy, was looking anxious when he learned about the take-off and subsequent hanging-by-the-knees position. “It’s OK,” I said, “ I know you can do it.” He replied, “I’m really nervous.” It was a real change from his usual self-assured persona. One by one, each student climbed 23 feet into the air, jumped off a platform, swung out and then hung upside- down. Most were nervous, but especially Theo, as this pushed him way outside his comfort zone into what we call “stretch” or “risk” in our classes. The most powerful part of the day was when he slowly, with encouragement, took one hand and then the other off the bar to hang by his knees. His face showed just how hard this was for him. We all learned a lot about him in those few seconds when he had to decide how much he trusted himself and the person on the safety lines and allow himself to be vulnerable in front of his peers. The idea of having a “shared experience” is what Light- foot (1997) heard repeatedly when she interviewed teens about risk-taking. By telling and retelling stories about heir escapades, they created narratives that became the social glue that held them together. This was true for our group; the students became closer after looking at photos from the day, laughing at their smiling and scared faces, and reveling in the accomplishment of stretching beyond their comfort zone.

—Laura Warner

Teens Need to Play

In our Wellness program, we have taken the idea of Challenge by Choice one step further by working to adopt this mind-set throughout the year. We believe that learning to take healthy risks is particularly appropriate for teenagers.

In the Western world, the term adolescence is often viewed as synonymous with bad decisions—early sexual encounters, reckless driving, parties without parental supervision, and other impulsive deeds done without regard for consequences. We know that the teenage years are tumultuous, that middle schoolers teeter between childlike and adultlike behavior, and that high schoolers often push the limits of the rules.