McCallion
Quest

DPA- Yes, The Government Says We Need it, But Can't We Move It to Period 4???

I'm Hungry!!!

 By Cherine Zahed

 DPA= DAILY PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

             As we now know DPA is a government rule that is designed as a daily activity time to get us, the students, up and running. Basically it is designed to make sure that our hearts are pumping, and that we will somehow, over time, get into shape. At first this sounded like fun, but when you continue to do it everyday, hate to tell you, but all of this energy consuming activity is getting the students, like me, tired and definitely hungry, which isn’t that fun.  

            Being hungry and tired takes our minds off of our main task, to do our school work. Studies show that when children are hungry at school, and have some work to attend to, and they are not as focused, and they won't be able to perform and work as effectively. Students here at Hazel and at most, if not all other schools, depend on food. For the amount of schoolwork we are given on a daily basis, being hungry shouldn’t be an option we should have to face everyday. 

            Now, we know it is impossible to eliminate DPA, as it is a law, but if we switched DPA to fourth period, this hunger would go away or it wouldn’t be as noticeable during a time we are supposed to be learning. After DPA, rather than being hungry and still having to go to another class, we could be sitting at our desks happily eating our lunches. Though some might disagree and say that we could keep DPA where it is and give the students the chance to eat a small snack afterwards, many teachers who I have spoken to are not willing to give up some of their class time to let students eat food in their classrooms, and allow them to do something that would take the focus off of their teaching and their assignments. Plain and simple, just by switching DPA to fourth period, these problems will go away. 

            In a recent interview with Ms. Wigham, she explained to me that the government has issued a statement that DPA has to occur between the morning and lunch. She also said that if we had DPA at fourth period, recess would be following it, and the students would have too much activity at once. To me, having recess after DPA is a good idea. For one thing, our hunger is immediately eliminated with lunch and then we get to go out and socialize. It’s kind of as if its one really long recess, like at elementary school. And we’re not going to be kids for too much longer, so we might as well seize the day and have some fun for an ‘extended’ period of time.