Marengo teacher wants physical education class to create life-long love of sport

At the start of Jeremy Burke’s archery unit at Marengo Community Middle School, students do Katniss Everdeen’s three-finger salute from “The Hunger Games” books and movies.

It has become a tradition for his students – some who enjoy practicing with a bow and arrow because of the books, Burke said.

For other students, learning archery is part of their family’s deer-hunting traditions.

“We don’t go out hunting deer,” Burke said, but if the students have bow hunting equipment, they can bring it, but using field-tip arrows, “not the ones that meant to hurt things.”

By offering programs students can do on their own, “we are touching and meeting the kids with the interests they have,” Burke said.

Burke has the unique ability to connect with all his students with his wit and his engaging personality.

—  Marengo Union Elementary School District 165 Superintendent Lea Damisch

Archery joins units like frisbee golf, pickleball and golf as the sports he hopes students will continue as adults, Burke said.

Burke has a “unique approach” to creating life-long health and habits for his students, Marengo Union Elementary School District 165 Superintendent Lea Damisch said.

“Burke has the unique ability to connect with all his students with his wit and his engaging personality,” she said.

He attended nearby Riley School and Marengo Community High School “and is dedicated to giving his students the same excellent experience in PE that he received,” Damisch said.

Marengo’s middle school physical education program still does all of the traditional sports most people probably remember from their own classes: basketball, soccer and baseball, among others.

But in activities like archery, “you don’t have to be super athletic to do that. It is about form and consistency,” Burke said.

The sports are also things that people can do on their own, without having to be part of a team sport. “You are able to go out on your own and ... play,” Burke said.

He and the other PE teachers also had to get creative once COVID-19 hit, finding sports that spread students out while also keeping them active.

“What sports could they do on their own and throughout the year on their own?” Burke said they wondered.

Archery was something he had taught before, but it went by the wayside when the middle school moved into the former high school building.

“They left the archery equipment behind. The PE teachers here ... took up the mantel” to teach it again, Burke said.

At first, students can be a little nervous about shooting an arrow. “Once they shoot it and get used to it, it is not as scary,” Burke said.

There is a frisbee golf course in Marengo students can use, so doing that for one class unit made sense, Burke said. The district’s parent-teacher association purchased some frisbee golf goals, too, to give students a way to practice without going to the course.

When he wanted to add a golf unit, a youth golf association donated needed equipment. The unit covers putting, chipping, hitting “and your regular swing,” Burke said. “That was at no cost to us at all to help get it started.”

The plastic golf clubs and larger-than-regulation golf balls they use help teach those basic skills, Burke said.

The program, now in its second year, led to an after-school golf club. Students – 12 of them from different grades in the middle school – received their own set of golf clubs to keep and golf with their teachers on a local course.

For many of his students, the golf unit and after-school club might be the only exposure they have had to the sport. Once they head to the high school, the opportunity may lead them to joining the golf team, Burke said.

Pickleball, a cross between tennis and pingpong, “is really hot right now,” Burke said. “I want to turn our tennis courts into pickleball” for students, too.

The sports, he said, “are the main four we are really focusing on for exercise and healthy habits.”