C.L.A.Y. in Academics
C.l.a.y. in schools
Coach Milo on the early thoughts of the Coalition for Launching Active Youth.
C.L.A.Y.’s genesis dates back to a second/third grade combo classroom at Highland Ranch Elementary School in San Diego, California. It was there that our founder, Coach Milo, gained a real-world, first-hand understanding of just how bad physical fitness, within the American education system, had become. C.L.A.Y. was born then and continues to develop today.
Physical inactivity in our youth is a wide-spread issue that has health, economic, social and environmental implications. Lack of movement has become so bad that the World Health Organization has labeled the problem a pandemic.
Gym class seemingly has been a cause of consternation for many. Bullies, inattentive teachers, poor curriculum and poorer state and national standards have all contributed to giving scholastic physical education a bad reputation.
We believe a little differently.
Gym class always has been great and always will be great.
What is bad is twofold.
First too many physical education curriculums throughout the world fail to focus on teaching fundamental movement skills and fundamental sports skills. They are trying to teach children to throw, hit, kick, catch, run bases and pass when the child does not understand weight shift, posture and alignment and cannot skip, much less, sprint. The curriculums are not malleable either. We are not giving our children an opportunity to be good at movement. Nobody wants to be bad at anything. Yet, the way physical education is run, we are setting up our children to be bad, at best, at many physical activities.
Then too often our schools have people who are not qualified or prepared to teach physical education. The football and soccer teams have won a dozen championships. That does not make the coaches good PE teachers. The softball team has won more than all of them combined. Likewise those accomplishments are not and should never be a prerequisite for being a physical education teacher.
Coach Milo showing young athletes how to jump and how to land from a jump. This may seem like a simplistic endeavor, but think about it: who taught you the mechanics of jumping and safely landing? Schools can do this again, provided they have individuals qualified to teach these movements.
C.L.A.Y. has been:
Used as physical education program for 7th and 8th graders.
Used as the physical education component of elementary classes.
Used as an addendum to standard education classes.
Used as an after school program.
Physical education teachers should not have a sports-minded agenda but should have an enjoyment for all movement because movement begets athleticism and athleticism begets sports performance. PE teachers should be there to teach the children how to move properly. They should teach them how to throw, how to kick and strike, how to duck, how to run and jump, how to shoot a free throw, how to squat, how to segmentally roll from supine to prone and from prone to supine and how to hit a ball among other things.
Those things, I fear, are not going to happen because I do not know of any colleges that teach students how to be PE teachers today. Many universities and colleges have conveniently, albeit wrongly, wrapped PE in with the kinesiology department, that is, if they even offer PE. By definition, kinesiology is the study of the mechanics of body movement. I believe universities fail at that, too. Odds are good that the next time you see a university professor giving tips to students on improving the gait of a 5-year-old's skip - it will be the first time you see it.
Spouting off about our PE experiences, be they good or bad, is pretty easy. A little more work is needed to figure out why the experience was good or bad. In both cases the why boils down to the curriculum or the person teaching it or both.
C.L.A.Y. is a long-term movement development program. We want to help develop amazing athletes. That means helping create bodies that understand and have a solid grasp on fundamental movement skills and fundamental sports skills.
If those bodies decide to play sports, so be it. We would be happy. But if those bodies decide they want to manage Broadway Theatre or write the next great screen play, nothing would make us happier.
C.L.A.Y. is about helping create bodies that can do what they want to do when they want to do it. Some want to use nanotechnology to fight disease. Some want to win the U.S. Open. They both should fit and healthy enough to pursue those dreams.