Today I substituted for a PE coach at the high school, teaching first and second-year general physical education and a double period of weight training for wrestlers.  For the first two periods of wrestling, I wandered around the room and watched people train.  It's a part of the high school I never had to face during my time there, the weight room.  I considered myself lucky to skip freshman PE and jump straight into Team Sports my sophomore year.  As an Academic Decathlon member and somewhat of a nerd, I always assumed that the kids in weightlifting were meatheads.  Well, I can't say that I dispelled that stereotype today, but I did reflect on the discipline required to train your body with weights.  Lots of the kids just sat around and chatted; they tended to be the wimpy ones.  The guys who were dedicated to working out had plenty of muscle to show for it.  Most of all, though, I reflected on how scrawny I was in high school compared to some of these big guys.  And I'm still pretty scrawny.  I get asked that question all the time in various forms:  "Are you the teacher?!", and "How old are you?"  I don't think I would have any qualms about a son (or daughter) of mine taking weight lifting in high school, because it's another way to build self-discipline and work towards a goal, the goal of being a fit person.

I also wanted to mention that during the second-year PE class I was asked to spot for one guy who was lifting weights, because the class was mostly girls.  So I helped him out, and we ended up spending the rest of the hour lifting together.  It was fun, but quite exhausting.

Not as exhausting, however, as the fifth period general PE class.  Those kids were monsters, and I was beat by the time we left the gym.  The character trait that I noted with most disgust was how destructive some of the kids are.  Maybe growing up in the relative affluence of Southern California hasn't taught them to value property and take good care of things.  As missionaries in Spain, my parents lived on the shoestring budget and had to take good care of stuff to make it last a longer.  These kids would benefit in a lesson like that, I think.