Newport High School Observation Report

At Newport High School, all freshmen are required to run four miles as part of the mandatory physical education class. This acts as a measure of improvement in the students’ stamina and speed after two and a half months of training and conditioning in winter. The aim of this exercise is to run 16 laps around the track at Newport, with each lap being counted as it was completed with a popsicle stick. Students are graded through a rubric including total time taken, number of laps completed, and whether or not a student walks. This assignment accounts for 10% of all students’ grades in the class, making it the most important task of the entire year.
Towards the end of the training period in late January, conditioning began to intensify. We would run the “Green Mile” once or twice a day. The “Green Mile” consists of running from Newport to I-90 and back. This loop is made particularly arduous by the fact that the route taken is uphill for the entire length of the run with the exception of the last 100 feet. These last two soul crushing weeks of the fitness unit convinced me that running the entirety of the 4-mile was infeasible.
For every lap completed, we would receive a popsicle stick until either we either received 16 sticks or we stopped running. To prevent counterfeit sticks the student counselors would write vaguely encouraging statements on the popsicle sticks. The P.E. teachers knew their handwriting as well so writing on the sticks yourself was impossible without being caught. Money, however, is a great tool for circumventing these anti-cheating parameters; I found a student counselor with whom I was friends and I had him create eight forgeries for a small fee of