What Marching Band Full P.E. Credit Means For High Schoolers: A Florida Parent’s Perspective
The passenger door of my minivan swung open last Tuesday, and my 16-year-old daughter Lila flopped in, her gray band polo stuck to her back with sweat, an ice pack taped to her left calf, and her socks caked with a week’s worth of grass clippings from the practice field. “I can’t feel my toes,” she said, leaning her head against the window. “We ran through the entire halftime show 11 times today. My clarinet’s heavier than it looks when you’re holding it at attention for 45 minutes straight.” Two years ago, after this same three-hour practice, she’d have dragged herself inside and spent another 40 minutes working through a tedious online P.E. course just to make up the half credit that marching band didn’t cover. This year, it’s different: Florida now lets marching band students earn full P.E. credit for their time on the field, and the change has been a bigger deal for our family than I expected it to be.
When Lila was a freshman, she got cut from junior varsity soccer after two tryouts, and came home saying she’d never join another school sport if she could help it. She’d played clarinet since fifth grade, so marching band was an easy fit. Back then, our district only gave half a P.E. credit for the year-long program, which meant she had to fit an extra online P.E. module into her already packed schedule of seven academic classes, 10 hours a week of band practice, and weekly private lessons. I’d find her falling asleep at her laptop at 10:30 most nights, staring at a screen asking her to match food groups to serving sizes, complaining that she was already more physically tired than any of her friends who played volleyball or soccer.
I volunteered at band camp last August, so I’ve seen the work first hand. It’s 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in 90-degree heat, humidity so thick your sunglasses fog up just standing outside. The kids start with a half-mile warm up run, then an hour of footwork drills where they practice holding a 12-inch step perfectly, over and over. By lunch, half the kids have gone through two full 32-ounce water bottles. The sousaphone players carry instruments that weigh close to 30 pounds for the entire practice. Last year, one of the trombone players passed out halfway through a run-through, and spent the next hour on a bench in the shade sipping Gatorade while the trainer checked his vitals. That’s not sitting around playing music—that’s the same kind of physical grind I remember from my high school cross country days.
When the new law passed earlier this year, I saw a lot of pushback from parents on our local parent Facebook group. One comment that stuck with me said, “Why should playing an instrument count for P.E.? It’s an art, not a sport.” I get the question, but it misses what most people don’t see about marching band. I looked at the step count data our band director shared with the school board last year: the average student gets 15,000 to 20,000 steps during a three-hour after school practice. That’s 7 to 10 miles of continuous movement, while memorizing formations, coordinating with 120 other kids, and playing an instrument at the same time. Compare that to the typical traditional P.E. class Lila took her freshman year: most days, kids spend half the class changing, a quarter of it waiting in line for a turn at kickball or basketball, and end up with maybe 4,000 steps total for the hour. It’s hard to argue that marching band is less physical than that.
For parents in other states who are dealing with the same half-credit issue, there’s small, concrete things you can do that don’t require a whole new state law. Our band director started by just collecting hard data: step counts from kids’ watches, activity logs of practice time, notes from the school trainer about the types of injuries kids get (they’re mostly the same strains and sprains you see in cross country and soccer). He presented that to the school board before the state bill even came up, which made the conversation way less emotional and more about facts. If you’re a parent frustrated that your kid’s work isn’t counting, start there: collect the data, share it with your administration. If you’re a teacher or school board member, go sit in on a marching band practice for 20 minutes before you decide it’s not physical enough. You’ll leave sweating just standing there, I promise.
It’s not a perfect change, of course. Some people rightly point out that traditional P.E. teaches kids different skills—how to play casual team sports, basic fitness concepts that they’ll use after high school. That’s true, but for kids like Lila who hate traditional P.E. and spend the whole class benched because they’re not good at basketball, it’s hard to see what they’re learning. Lila told me the only thing she got out of her freshman year P.E. was that she was bad at dodgeball. I do wonder what will happen down the line: will more schools start cutting required traditional P.E. altogether, and just let kids count any after school activity? That’s a valid concern, and one that’s still up in the air here.
Last Friday, I went to the first home football game, and stood on the bleachers watching the halftime show. The band marched from one end of the field to the other, formed shapes, played three songs, and never missed a step. It was still 85 degrees at 8 p.m., and by the end of the show, every kid’s shirt was dark with sweat. Afterward, Lila came over to where I was standing, chugged two bottles of water, and said her legs felt like jello. On the drive home, she pulled out her AP Bio flashcards to study for a quiz next week, instead of logging into that annoying online P.E. class. I don’t know if this change will spread across the country, or if there will be pushback that reverses it here. But for right now, it’s just nice to see my kid’s hard work get the credit it’s owed. No extra hoops to jump through, no pointless extra work on top of everything else she’s already doing.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What Marching Band Full P