Hey Gym Teachers

Math/Phys/Chem teacher, but in a school I worked at last year, dodgeball was common (highschool).

1. It propagates bullying among younger children. The stronger students target the weak. All the time, every time.

2. Some students can't handle the idea of being hit by a friend or someone they perceive as being a friend. They take being hit by the ball as a sign the other person hates them.

3. Anger and the slippery slope of revenge leads to bad sportsmanship and grudges. Being hit with a ball is the physical manifestation of that anger or perceived anger.

For my lower school students we have a game called pinball. They protect plastic bowling pins with the same rules as dodgeball but instead of getting students out they knock down pins. When all the pins are down, game over and start again. if they get hit with the ball they know the other student isn't trying to hit them. They can use their body to defend the pin if they choose to.

Let's face it. When you look at the profession, there are some poor educators out there. My experience tells me that PE has a much higher percentage of incompetence than any other subject area.

Our district banned dodgeball, but we used to play about once every 6-8 weeks before that. Dodgeball does meet national standard #1. It's not a respected game in the field, but kids generally enjoy it and it works on throwing, catching, and dodging. The limitations listed in previous posts are considerations however. We would use this game occasionally on an unanticipated rainy day.

PE has become much more health related for numerous schools. We teach about the importance of health related fitness, use heart rate monitors, goal setting, and incorporate some nutrition and resistance training in middle school while still playing team sports that kids tend to enjoy.

I'm 25 and played dodgeball from elementary all the way through to high school. It was mostly used in between playing other sports. We played a few variations, but usually with the foam balls. They were small enough to get a good grip on and you could whip them decently enough. The good thing about them was that the weaker kids could throw them much better than they could a rubber ball. Obviously the more athletic kids still had an advantage, but it leveled the playing field a little bit and made it more fun.

We also played flicker ball with those balls. They are easier to catch, which allowed everyone to be more involved than normal. There were still different levels of talent, but it changed the game by forcing the defense to still cover the girls/unathletic people.

Back in the Day wrote:

I meant more the "national standards" thing. WTF do we have national standards in PE for? To make sure we can do the electric slide better than the Chinese? Don't get me wrong, bud, I loved my teachers (most of them, including my PE teachers). It's a bunch of shiftless educrats who set "national standards" for PE, or reading and writing for that matter (think No Child Left Behind) that make me hate the ole educational-industrial complex.

I don't know, being able to throw and catch seems pretty worthwhile to me. It may not be the most important thing in the world, but everyone should be able to at least throw and catch a ball.

Share the vast experience you've had with Fitness instructors. I'm serious. No sarcasm here. You're right. As with all professions, there is incompetence and I get it, you're trying to insinuate that we're too stupid to teach something else. Share your profession. Then give me 5 minutes and the Internet and I'll find multiple examples of incompetence in your field. I'd love to watch an over weight computer programmer or an obsessive compulsive, self absorbed stock broker try to handle a class of 25 second graders. And then do it 5-7 times a day, 5 days a week.

Sure, some PE teachers aren't very bright. There are definitely other teachers who are just as stupid as you assume PE teachers are. There are a lot of math teachers that can't write legibly on a white board. If students can't read it, how can they learn? That would be incompetence. I've had some who can't do simple math without a calculator. But they can turn around and rip off equations and other crap that is well beyond my understanding. Of course, put them on the basketball court and they fall on their ass while the PE teacher dribbles circles around them.

I'm a teacher and yes, you're right.

Obviously struck a nerve. I'm a PE teacher.

My gym teacher use to let us play dodgeball all the time. He was the man. He would do push ups on the bookshelves in the library and tell us stories like the time a bully called a mentally challenged person "needle dick" and how he beat the crap out of the bully.

Now he is a bar tender at a bar I frequent. I drank 5 $2 beers the other night with a $10 dinner and he charged me me $8.

So ya...dodgeball is cool.

Freelove wrote:

Back in the Day wrote:

I meant more the "national standards" thing. WTF do we have national standards in PE for? To make sure we can do the electric slide better than the Chinese? Don't get me wrong, bud, I loved my teachers (most of them, including my PE teachers). It's a bunch of shiftless educrats who set "national standards" for PE, or reading and writing for that matter (think No Child Left Behind) that make me hate the ole educational-industrial complex.

I don't know, being able to throw and catch seems pretty worthwhile to me. It may not be the most important thing in the world, but everyone should be able to at least throw and catch a ball.

Yeah, I know I would have never learned to throw and catch a ball without the expert guidance of the United States Department of Education.

Wow, I can't believe there is so much fuss about dodgeball. Kids are way too sensitive if they may take it personally somebody hit them with a ball. My goodness, what if these kids do track someday? What will happen if, gasp, one of their friends beats them in a race? Will it be because they didn't like them and make them feel unwanted and make them clinically depressed?

It is a good thing that tablet PC's are around now, because hopefully all books will be available on those and kids won't have to lug around backpacks and strain themselves. If all goes as planned, we will build a future generation of kids who are physically and emotionally weak.

This ^.

I know a coach who got canned for "pushing" the girls track team too far for workouts that were too "strenuous". Isn't that the point? Track (life) isn't easy. Man up.

BK wrote:

Back in the Day wrote:

When I was a kid we played dodge ball with rocks. It built character. Made me what I am today.

Rocks are good. We played with basketballs. I once had a throw go over my head and when I turned around the ball went wall-face-wall-man parts. Game over.

I grew up on a military base. We used to play dodgeball with those rubber balls, with the caveat that one ball was inflated with Semtex. If you didn't practice your catching skills, you never knew who was going to lose a limb in 3rd period.

I was a pretty typical distance runner, small, weak, slow, and bad at pretty much all sports. I was also a pretty big nerd, having skipped a grade when I was younger and being strong in math.

I loved dodgeball. Probably my favorite gym game next to capture the flag. Maybe it helped that there wasn't a whole lot of bullying that went on at my school (or maybe there was and I was just oblivious to it, which is possible). We played with the foam balls and it was usually a rule that you couldn't hit someone in the head, otherwise the thrower was out. I always thought that was a dumb rule, but what can you do.

Back in the Day wrote:

When I was a kid we played dodge ball with rocks. It built character. Made me what I am today.

What exactly are you today?

WhitePony wrote:

Back in the Day wrote:

When I was a kid we played dodge ball with rocks. It built character. Made me what I am today.

What exactly are you today?

Bad to the bone, tough as nails and smart as a whip.

Exactly. Do we want to raise soft weaklings who can't even handle getting hit with a rubber ball? There are much tougher things to face in life, we do no favors by coddling these kids.