It’s a far cry from your mommy’s mile run.
Eleven girls lined up at one end of a gymnasium at La Vista West Elementary School for a running test that’s increasingly becoming a fixture in American physical education classes.
The test is part of the FitnessGram regimen, an alternative to the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.
The girls stood ready to take their PACER test. The Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run is a 20-meter multistage shuttle run set to music.
PE teacher Nate McCabe started a CD, and a male narrator’s voice explained how the test works. Upon hearing a tone, the girls must run to the opposite end of the gym before they hear another tone. Then they turn around and do it the other direction, back and forth, counting laps. The intervals between beeps get shorter, challenging them to keep pace.
“The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound,” the narrator’s voice said, “your test is over.”
At the sound of the first beep, the girls were off and running.
“Keep going, c’mon,” McCabe encouraged the girls. “Try to stay in a straight line, Carley.”
Eventually all of the girls but one dropped out. They headed for the drinking fountain or plopped down along the gym wall. McCabe recorded each one’s lap count.
Only Carley Balletta, 9, the smallest of the girls, was still running. With her classmates cheering her on, Carley racked up 36 laps before quitting.
McCabe said that with the traditional mile run, athletic students finished first and stood around watching as the out-of-shape kids trickled in. During his first year teaching at La Vista West, that experience “crushed a girl.”
PACER turns that situation on its head, he said. The slower kids drop out as they reach their limits while the high achievers keep going, the center of attention.
McCabe likes that kids are striving for what’s scientifically healthy for them and are not locked in competition.
“There’s a place for that competition,” he said, “and PE’s not it.”
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