By Irving Espinoza ’17
Across all Noble campuses, each high school holds an academic and physical standard that every student must meet to be promoted to the next grade level. Students are required to pass the fitness test as well as the health test. Throughout the year, physical education teachers prepare their students for the final fitness test, which consists of the following exercises: push ups, curl ups, and a mile run.
According to Emily Driessen, a physical education and health teacher, “We [PE teachers] took a different approach in terms of how we organized our class and I think it has worked. It is a wonderful thing to watch students work hard throughout the course of the year and then improve their fitness.”
Every year, the PE teachers across the Noble Network try to come up with different systems for more students to pass the fitness test and more importantly improve their overall fitness and health. Thanks to the hard work put in by PE teachers across the network a lot of students are passing their fitness tests, as well as the health test, and some are even reaching honors and elite categories.
Students at Pritzker say that the final fitness test for physical education went well this year. Dania Luna, a sophomore, said, “I believe that PCP students improved in the test because when I was a judge many hit the minimum to at least pass the test when in the beginning many were getting two strikes or couldn’t just do it, so therefore I believe that many have improved in their fitness test.”
For the pushups and curl ups test, students are given strikes if they have bad form when performing the repetitions. Once a student hits two strikes, they have failed the test, which shows they need more practice. Luna notes that many of their peers’ hard work in PE paid off because a majority of them were passing their pushups and curl ups test, whereas at the beginning most were struggling to pass.
Another example, Vanessa Banderas, a junior, said, “I think students improved a lot because comparing our scores from the beginning of the year to now, you see that many students had put a large amount of effort into passing and achieving the scores they wanted.” Banderas also notes that her peers worked very hard throughout the year to improve their fitness and be able to pass their test or do better.
Overall, the final fitness test was a success at Pritzker. Physical education teachers did their best to help their students improve their fitness and health. Consequently, students worked hard through the year in class, which showed based off of their performance during testing and scores.
