When the time came last year for Glenbrook South High School to replace cardio equipment in the physical education department, administrators decided to use the $125,000 allocated to them by the district to create “a more functional and inclusive” environment in the fitness center, according to staff.
Casey Wright, the school’s associate principal of administrative services, said GBS originally planned to use the money on bikes and treadmills.
But after meeting with a few of the school’s PE teachers, Wright said the decision was made to rework the budget and buy more “functional fitness equipment” to “get more of the student body excited about physical fitness.”
After two years of planning, the new fitness center was unveiled on Jan. 23, complete with three different exercise zones and some new equipment.
A small team of teachers, administrators and district staff met frequently over the course of the two years to bring the vision into reality, said Ryan Bretag, the director of instructional innovation for Glenbrook High School District 225.
SD225 includes GBS and Glenbrook North High School.
“It took a lot of planning and dedication, but we were able to get creative and do so much more with the money we were given, it was amazing,” he said.
GBS brought in Bretag to meet with teachers and come up with a new outlook on the fitness center. He said the old workout space did not necessarily appeal to a wide range of students.
“It’s really easy to walk into a space and if the first thing you see are these really big heavy plates and there’s barbells slamming on the ground…it doesn’t feel inclusive,” Bretag said.
“When we look at the large-scale gyms and that model, they serve a certain population. And we know that,” he added.
When he first met with staff from the GBS physical education department, Bretag said teachers expressed the desire to have a space that was open and complemented the kind of multifaceted fitness education that they had been trying to implement for years.
“Our teachers were already trying to make this move but the space was a limitation and the equipment was a limitation,” Bretag said. “So by creating a better place and getting them the right equipment, we’ve unlocked the ability for them to do the curriculum the way they want.”
Joshua Stanton, a PE and driver’s education teacher who is also assistant department chair, said that “functional fitness” builds exercises around movements that people do in their everyday lives in order to improve their quality of life.
“It doesn’t really take a lot of equipment, it just takes you and being able to manipulate your body in certain movement patterns and you can still gain cardiovascular endurance, strength, flexibility, all of the five components of fitness that we try to hammer home within our curriculum,” Stanton said.
One zone in the restructured fitness center includes multifunctional CrossFit “rigs.” All 23 teachers in the school’s PE department participated in CrossFit’s level one certificate course to learn how to use them properly, Bretag said.
“All of the barbells and plates have been moved to the back into a vertical space on the wall,” Bretag said. “So that helps eliminate the feeling that you’re walking into a weight room.”
There is still zone for cardio, but old machines were replaced with an array of equipment, Stanton said.
“You’ve got treadmills, ellipticals, spin bikes and now we have the rowers, we have the ski ergs…so there’s a lot of different things that we can implement now to give students a more diverse experience,” he said.
A large, open turf area with barbells and free weights has been the favorite of many students, Bretag said.
PE teacher Bob Rosinski said the new space allows for multiple classes to use the facility at once without it feeling crowded.
“The main goal in creating the facility was to accommodate multiple classes in our space at once but also have a design that allows our teachers to focus on teaching our students the importance of functional fitness,” Rosinski said.
Even in the first few days, Stanton said he saw a noticeable change in his students’ enthusiasm to work out, even among students who were not very interested in fitness previously.
“Once they go through and use the new equipment, they say ‘oh wow I can do this’ which is really awesome to hear,” he said.
Stanton said the new space will allow the PE department to continue striving towards the goal of teaching students healthy habits that they can carry on with them into their adult lives.
“Ultimately, our main goal is to expose them to as many different ways to exercise as possible and hopefully they find something they’re passionate about and gravitate towards that once they leave our walls to graduate,” he said.
Kelli Duncan is a freelancer.
