All-Star Article

[omgitssydthekid]

In Kansas (at least in the area in currently in) it's pretty common to have cheer as a class. However, in Missouri (again, at least where I'm from) all athletic activities are after or before school. In Missouri, cheer is allowed to compete and in Kansas they are not (not sure if it makes a difference)


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[bmta1993]

In Maryland cheer is all after school (as is all sports as well)

 

[CheerBank]

Cp has choices for gym class like "Wellness for Life" and "Project Adventure" but no specific sport. Students who play a sport after school are not excused from gym; they all get a regular number grade for gym. I remember taking volleyball for gym in HS in 10th-12th grade. All volleyball all year long, it was glorious. And athletes were excused from gym class only on days when they had a game or in my case a swim meet. You still had to go though and then just sit out (but not change).

 

[Nothanks]

Just seeing this now, but all sports in Maine are after school activities. We only took PE as a freshman and had no physical activity requirements after that. Does a sports period take away from being able to have a study period? With all the clubs and organizations I was involved in that met before and after school, and with all star cheering (I'm excluding school cheer because I assume they don't practice additionally after school), it would would have been extremely difficult to keep up with all the school work from my classes without a study hall.


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I went to boarding school, so it's a little more unique the way it worked for us.

Freshman year, fall term, every student takes gym. From then on, if you aren't involved in a school sanctioned sport, you had to log so many hours (I want to say 5?) a week in the school fitness center but it could be done during your break period or on evenings or weekends.

I was always under the impression that, by doing it this way, the school was not held to the PE/health class standard.


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[cheerKT]

This is all completely new to me. Every sport in SC in after school. Sports did not count as your PE credit, but I believe you only need one semester of PE to graduate. (It was PE one semester and health the next. You could sub it with dance but that was it)

 

[RileyElizabeth99]

At my daughter's HS (in a suburb of Dallas), they do have class periods dedicated to sports (cheer is one of them). They're listed under "athletics". Each coach determines how they award grades. When my daughter was in HS cheer last year, they graded them on tumbling, their performance and participation in games, etc. They also had tests on cheers/chants and knowledge of the sports they were cheering for. This year she's in the track class period and I don't think she's graded on anything. All her grades entered are "100". LOL! But, the grades for athletics are not counted in their GPA. For her HS graduation requirements, she's only required to complete 1.0 credit of PE/Athletics which her first semester of cheer freshman year satisfied. Any subsequent semesters of an athletic class period only count as "local electives" and do not count towards her total elective credit graduation requirements. So those kids who do sports in class periods every year have to be very careful with how they plan out their schedules.
Most sports teams that have practice during a class period also hold additional practice times before or after school during their sport's season.

Wow! Interesting, we have to take a PE and Health credit. The closest we have to sports as an elective is most of our football players take our weight lifting PE class, but you can only take it once in the 4 years.

 

[Alexx]

At my school you had to take 6 semesters of PE, and one semester of health which was taken your freshman year, and then one semester of drivers ed, which could be taken outside of school and count. If you were in marching band you could get out of fall semester gym all four years, but for sports you had to be a junior or senior to get out, and then you got out of PE for whatever semester your sport took place in. Its crazy to see how many schools only required PE for one semester.

 

[fiercerando88]

This is crazy to me. Who's teaching these "sport classes"? The coach of said sport? What happens if the coach is an actual teacher, or doesn't work in the school system at all? Working in the school system and coaching in NH, I don't see how this is a possibility at all.

I am a paraprofessional currently and coach field hockey at the high school, our other coach is a middle school teacher, so wouldn't be able to up and leave the middle school to come over to the high school to teach a field hockey class. All sports are after school.

And our school requires at least one year of PE and one year of health (separate classes). Athletes are not exempt from either of these. For other electives in this PE realm, they have a Team Sports class, (juniors or seniors only where they learn about the less-common team sports, learn about team/group dynamics, and how to prepare practices); Current Topics in Health (only for seniors and pretty self-explanatory); Health II (juniors and seniors only, explores the health related careers and goes into way more detail than regular health which is required of everyone); and Fitness Training (juniors and seniors only, and is basically like a personal training class, teaches kids how to exercise properly, focusing on the muscles and what they do/how they effect each other).

Always interesting to see how other states/schools do things!


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[CheerItFullOut]

Color guard is a class at our school...however cheer is not (I'm fine that cheer isn't a class, although it would be super convenient for us to get some facility time) .Marching band is trying to become a sport along with Flag and letter now that cheer has been made official in California... I'm sorry, but NO. Also, I think the whole "athletes should be exempt or get PE credit for being on a sport" ... Is kind of silly. Isn't the whole point of sports to encourage kids to be active BEYOND their daily "requirement" or curriculum of physical activity?!

 

[luv2cheer92]

Just seeing this now, but all sports in Maine are after school activities. We only took PE as a freshman and had no physical activity requirements after that. Does a sports period take away from being able to have a study period? With all the clubs and organizations I was involved in that met before and after school, and with all star cheering (I'm excluding school cheer because I assume they don't practice additionally after school), it would would have been extremely difficult to keep up with all the school work from my classes without a study hall.


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Dang, we didn't have sports as classes or a study period. I really wish study period was a thing where I'm from.

 

[purplecheer]

At my school in Australia, we do sport all year in year 7, 8 and 9 is half a year sport and half health. In year 10 we can choose if we want to do sport or not.

Because year 11 and 12 you pick all your classes (except you have to do an English) for the VCE. Victorian Certificate of Education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You do at least 4 classes, 5th and 6th classes 10% of your score goes onto the total score. You get a score out of 50 for each subject and these are averaged out to give you a ranking between 0 and 99.95, which you use to get into university/college.

I would love if you could log sport hours, because I do 7 hours of sports (cheer/dance/swimming) outside of school, and it would be so cool if I could do an extra art/tech/science/humanities instead of sport, because I don't like many of the sports we do at school.
Also, we have a certain amount of units we have to do of each subject-this year (9) it's 2 English, math and PE, and 1 technology, art, science and humanity. Then we have 2 other units to choose an extra technology, art, science or humanity, but if you want to do a language, those 2 units have to go towards that. I find this off-putting to people who want to learn a language, because they have to sacrifice extra other subjects.

 

[MOPSMommy1]

Also, I think the whole "athletes should be exempt or get PE credit for being on a sport" ... Is kind of silly. Isn't the whole point of sports to encourage kids to be active BEYOND their daily "requirement" or curriculum of physical activity?!

In our state you have to take a certain amount of credits to graduate, and they keep increasing that number of credits. If you want to take any type of music class, such as choir or band, it gets really hard to figure out how to get all those required credits in. Having your PE credit waived for either a school sport or an outside athletic activity is a reasonable solution for many students. The state requires students to have 140 (it might be only 120) minutes of PE/physical activity each week. My CP is in the cheer gym 11 hours/660 minutes a week, and that is just regular practices, not including privates, classes, open gym, etc. She more than fulfills the 140 minute requirement. I'm not sure why you would think it is "silly" to allow her to use this activity in place of a PE class that she doesn't need.

ETA - I just read your post again and realized that you were talking about a HS sport counting as a PE credit and I went off on a tangent about non-school related athletics. Sorry!


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[CheerItFullOut]

In our state you have to take a certain amount of credits to graduate, and they keep increasing that number of credits. If you want to take any type of music class, such as choir or band, it gets really hard to figure out how to get all those required credits in. Having your PE credit waived for either a school sport or an outside athletic activity is a reasonable solution for many students. The state requires students to have 140 (it might be only 120) minutes of PE/physical activity each week. My CP is in the cheer gym 11 hours/660 minutes a week, and that is just regular practices, not including privates, classes, open gym, etc. She more than fulfills the 140 minute requirement. I'm not sure why you would think it is "silly" to allow her to use this activity in place of a PE class that she doesn't need.

ETA - I just read your post again and realized that you were talking about a HS sport counting as a PE credit and I went off on a tangent about non-school related athletics. Sorry!


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No, I get what you're saying... However, my point is there are kids that are trying to get PE credit for band (In high school b/c it's a class... ( Right now they get a "music education/arts" credit I believe) ... In reality, most of this kids still need the physical education...Then others are trying to get PE credits for athletics by making them into a CLASS... This does not resolve the increased required credit issue AND it takes up an academic or elective class period. I agree with the one poster who said there should be a way to log hours of physical activity. Once you have reached a certain amount then and only then can you receive appropriated credits. I also understand that many people don't "like" PE or what activity PE has to offer...but its kind of PART of your core curriculum. While many kids are very hard working and do numerous activities in and out of school... Many do not. PE was put in place to keep kids well rounded.. Introduce them to sports they might not "know" about... Get them out of the classroom and "doing" something. Is it something that needs to be worked on, yes... But do I envy the job of a PE teacher, No. I can only explain it this way: when you go to school you have to learn MATH... Core math. You don't get your choice of choosing math as it applies to accounting, math as it applies to computer programming or math as it applies to engineering... Until later in college. (This isn't done in high schools simply b/c kids don't have a clear vision of what EXACTLY they will go into profession wise until AFTER being offered a little bit of everything) It's math, and we can't add a class for those involved in the "math club"... Then give them appropriate school credit because they are expanding on it in a way they like. How is anyone to know they received a "proper" expansion on the subject. (Now I'm on a tangent) ...
Bottom line, there will never be enough hours in the day for the people who work their butts off...no matter what way you try to make it work. And there will always be too many for those who simply do not care.

 

[CheerBank]

No, I get what you're saying... However, my point is there are kids that are trying to get PE credit for band (In high school b/c it's a class... ( Right now they get a "music education/arts" credit I believe) ... In reality, most of this kids still need the physical education...Then others are trying to get PE credits for athletics by making them into a CLASS... This does not resolve the increased required credit issue AND it takes up an academic or elective class period. I agree with the one poster who said there should be a way to log hours of physical activity. Once you have reached a certain amount then and only then can you receive appropriated credits. I also understand that many people don't "like" PE or what activity PE has to offer...but its kind of PART of your core curriculum. While many kids are very hard working and do numerous activities in and out of school... Many do not. PE was put in place to keep kids well rounded.. Introduce them to sports they might not "know" about... Get them out of the classroom and "doing" something. Is it something that needs to be worked on, yes... But do I envy the job of a PE teacher, No. I can only explain it this way: when you go to school you have to learn MATH... Core math. You don't get your choice of choosing math as it applies to accounting, math as it applies to computer programming or math as it applies to engineering... Until later in college. (This isn't done in high schools simply b/c kids don't have a clear vision of what EXACTLY they will go into profession wise until AFTER being offered a little bit of everything) It's math, and we can't add a class for those involved in the "math club"... Then give them appropriate school credit because they are expanding on it in a way they like. How is anyone to know they received a "proper" expansion on the subject. (Now I'm on a tangent) ...
Bottom line, there will never be enough hours in the day for the people who work their butts off...no matter what way you try to make it work. And there will always be too many for those who simply do not care.

Makes complete sense. My youngest is in middle school and loves gym - one of the joys of being a boy - and enjoys the variety of sports and activities they are introduced to. He plays soccer year round and played lax and football for years; it is novel and fun for him to have track and volleyball. And as for cp, as much of a pain it is to have PE in her schedule because she certainly is not one lacking for activity, it is nice to have that period where she's not worrying about academics and has 40 minutes of yoga.

 

[kristenthegreat]

In CT all sports are after (or sometimes before) school. At my particular HS, you needed one semester/credit of PE (basically for the very very small minority of kids who AREN'T in at least one sport- many kids did 2 or 3). It used to be for every season of sport you completed, you got 1/4 of the credit, and you could only use 2 of your 3 seasons per year to count. So since I did Volleyball 4 years (technically 3, as my first year I was out due to injury and it didn't count), and cheer 1 comp season and 1 basketball/comp the next year, I never had to take gym. I heard they removed that option in subsequent years (probably due to the lack of attendance). It was nice to have that extra free credit to fill how I liked, seeing as I was doing all sorts of other things (including art and music) instead.