Francesca Zavacky remembers taking a job in 1994 as a physical education teacher and eliminating dodgeball the year after.
“For me, as a teacher, I kept a running list of things that I thought were not appropriate as they should be for students, so that the activities and the things we were trying to accomplish were more student-centered,” said Zavacky, of the National Association for Sport & Physical Education. “So, I stopped playing dodgeball and never turned back.”
Why?
“What we’re asking is for schools to provide high-quality, standards-based programs that address the needs for all students, regardless of their health or their skill or their educational disparity,” she said. “Everybody’s different. Dodgeball really doesn’t allow for everybody to be successful.
“Another consideration is the activities that you provide students in class are usually designed to provide for the lessons that you present to align with the activity that you’re doing and the outcome you desire. When you look at dodgeball, there’s really not a positive outcome that you’re accomplishing at the end of that.”
Zavacky has not wavered.
“We really want teachers to include activities that provide kids with a high incidence of time on-task practicing the activity and the skills that they are learning,” she said. “Whereas, an elimination game, you have a great number of students that will be totally inactive as a result. That’s counterproductive.”
Chris Dempsey, The Denver Post
