Academics

Seoyeong Kim

August Franck

This semester, the Design Thinking class at Ramsey High School has been challenged to partner with the Department of Education to suggest innovative ideas that may be incorporated into the new state regulations regarding Physical Education in New Jersey. To gain more insight and a better understanding of the state requirements and their goals, the class interviewed Mr. Lennie Parham, the Comprehensive Health & Physical Education Coordinator from the Department of Education. Being the first of many steps in this collaboration, the interview started with the class getting to know Mr. Parham: his background, previous jobs he has had, and how these past experiences have helped him in his current position. This part of the interview evoked a number of insightful stories and built empathy between the two parties. We then continued to ask him content-specific questions on topics such as nutrition, mental health, substance abuse, and various standards and implementations in schools of other areas and other countries.

Having this conversation with an individual so knowledgeable in the field we are researching was a great leap toward reaching our goal of creating a thoughtful proposal that would embody our ideas. Summing up the interview, we have concluded that the state values addressing not only the physical aspect of the student, but also the wide range of details that make up an individual, such as one’s mental, social, and emotional wellness. To meet these standards, we will mainly focus on the idea of individualizing the system for the “whole person”. This will be done by gaining the viewpoints of students in all levels of education, considering the inputs of both athletes and non-athletes, and optimizing the resources we are fortunate to be at disposal of. Overall, this interview was very insightful for our project and the feedback we attained will become very beneficial when designing the ultimate approach where students of all sorts will be able to find a purpose and value in physical education.