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I really liked P.E.

Credit that to my energy, drive to succeed or just early puberty, but I really tried hard.

And, hey, P.E. was fun (except for the miserable, awful week we had to do gymnastics AND the awkwardness of square dancing ... but everything else? Loved)!

I even signed up for after-school "scooter basketball" one year - do any of you know what this is? It amounted to us using our feet to move around on little square-shaped "scooters" we sat on and shooting basketballs into garbage cans. Ah, man ... anyone want to start a league?

I also liked the Presidential Physical Fitness Test. Why? Probably because as an overachiever this gave me a chance to measure up, to excel, to see how I compared.

Also, probably because I did pretty well. The V sit and reach? Oh, yeah. I was flexible. The shuttle run? Yep. I was pretty fast (no matter that I was taller than everyone else in elementary school). The endurance run? I also had stamina. (And I just wouldn't stop trying! You dislike little girl me, don't you?).

I could not do a pull-up, however. You can imagine how I felt about this.

And because I couldn't do a pullup, I never won a Presidential fitness award.

School districts now are changing the way they assess students in P.E. Many schools have abandoned the Presidential fitness test, established in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson to combat concerns that U.S. kids weren't as fit as children in Europe.

They have instead adopted FitnessGram, which measures individual progress toward health goals rather than how a child ranks against her peers nationally.

As much as I liked the Presidential Fitness test, this shift to a more individualized assessment makes a lot of sense. We don't need to rank children any more than we already do. Focusing on an individual's health instead of comparing physical feats to a national standard of excellence seems, well, just better.

And anything we can do to encourage life-long health and wellness - and to start those habits at a young age - we ought to do, no matter what.

Read more on omaha.com.

posted by Veronica on Tuesday January 19, 2010