Maya McFadden Photo
Roberto Clemente students taking the push-up test.
A new iteration of gym class is taking hold in New Haven schools, focusing less on team sports and more on individualized fitness goals tailored to each child.
New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) physical education administrators offered that update to the Board of Education on Tuesday evening. The board met virtually via Zoom due to the snowstorm.
“While we still will have a sport component to our physical education, we want New Haven phys ed to be more fitness based,” said Director of P.E., Health, and Athletics Eric Patchkofsky. The goal is to focus on skills that students can “springboard” into “lifelong activity and fitness goals” past their schooling.
This shift aligns with a 21st-century trend in physical education of moving away from team sports and toward “lifelong” activities such as biking, dance, and yoga.
Patchkofsky and Assistant Director Eric Barbarito said they have instructed P.E. teachers to test students’ fitness abilities at the beginning, middle, and end of the year, and to create personal fitness goals for each student based on their performance on those tests.
One purpose of these individualized goals is to encourage kids to grow their skills no matter how well they start off doing in gym class.
“In the past, if a student didn’t pass the test, they failed,” said Patchkofsky. “Now, they’re able to say, ‘I was at level one … and I improved this much.’ ”
There’s a social-emotional learning component to this approach, in showing kids that growth is possible and hard work is beneficial at any skill level, Patchkofsky said. “It allows success for all students if they put some work in and strive to get better.”
Patchkofsky and Barbarito also presented data from the end of the 2022 – 23 school year on how New Haven kids are performing, fitness-wise, compared to other students.
Last school year, 64.4 percent of kids passed the PACER (aerobic capacity) test; 83.2 percent passed the curl-ups (core strength) test; 67.3 percent passed the push-ups (upper body strength) test; and 78.1 percent passed the sit-and-reach (flexibility) test.
In total, the percentage of students who passed all four exams was 44.3 percent, approximately matching the 45 percent pass rate for kids across the state. A more detailed breakdown of the data, including statistics by school, is available on the state’s website.
The results mark a general improvement from previous years. In the 2015 – 16 school year, 36.6 percent of New Haven students passed all four tests; in the 2021 – 22 school year, 42.1 percent of students passed.
Board of Education members responded with enthusiasm to the new plan.
OrLando Yarbrough praised the decision to focus on individualized improvement for each kid, noting that physical education is a “vital component for the ‘whole child.’ ”
“I am touched in my heart” by the emphasis on social-emotional skills that can be learned in P.E., said Abie Benitez.
Other board members offered suggestions for additional physical education approaches.
Ed Joyner wondered whether personalized data could be an opportunity to talk to kids about “the things they do to ruin their bodies, for lack of a better word,” referring to substance use.
Andrea Downer asked whether the school could promote more fitness among all school community members, including staff, through a free “wellness app” that might help teachers to “reduce stress and burnout.”