Is it PE or is it sport?

A positive aspect of remote learning has been the opportunity for parents to gain insights into the daily "school" life of their children. Remote learning has undoubtedly prompted many new conversations between you and your children. 

During this latest period of lockdown, our CEO, Hilary Shelton found herself repeating the conversation below daily with her children...

An upside of having my kids at home during remote learning is that I am more aware of the work and activities they are undertaking in their lessons. Each day we check in with them and ask them to tell us about their day - what lessons they had, what they learnt, any assignments due etc.

Two days in a row now I have had a similar conversation with two of my children, and it's got me wondering how other parents / carers might respond. Most likely due to the nature of my work, I'm very attuned and possibly a little sensitive to this (🤣). So, the discussion goes something like this...

Me: 'What lesson have you got now?'

Child: 'Sport.'

Me: 'Oh, is it PE or sport?' (knowing full well it could be sport - sport has an important place in the school environment so I'm legitimately checking, but also considering they are doing remote learning, I’m pretty sure right now it's not sport.)

Child: 'Umm yeah, PE.'

Me: 'So, you do know the difference, right?'

Child: 'Yep, PE is PE and sport is sport.'

Me: 'Let me give you an analogy - in your English / Literacy class you read but you don't tell your me subject is "reading". To read you need to learn about letters, spelling, sounding out words, putting sentences together, punctuation and so on... so reading is something you do to help you learn and to apply all the other components you've learnt. PE and sport is the same thing. PE is teaching you about movement skills, competency, decision making, why movement is important, etc and then you might practice, learn and use some of those skills by playing sport (in your PE lesson, during, before or after school or on the weekend in community sport). So, you see the difference now?'

Child: 'Yep.'

Me: [sigh]

This may seem trivial, and I know my kids think it is very trivial, but it really is important. Health and Physical Education is a critical and compulsory learning area in the curriculum. Quality Health and Physical Education opens a world of sport, physical activity, recreation and lifelong health to our children. It is not about creating champions and elite level athletes (most likely these talented kids will make it to the top irrespective), it is about opening up opportunities and enabling all children to participate in physical activity which they enjoy and find satisfying.

So back to my reading analogy – learning to read, is not about all kids being able to read "To Kill A Mocking Bird", it's about all kids being capable of reading, enjoying reading and choosing the reading material which appeals to them."

Physical Education is about more than playing sport. Ask your kids today, "..are you doing PE or sport?" ...and see what they say.

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