Who He Was
Phil Lawler thought he knew exactly which student was slacking off during the mile run. In the spring of 1989, the veteran PE teacher at Madison Junior High School in Naperville, Illinois, tried a new gadget, a heart rate monitor, on a girl he was sure wasn't trying. After class, he checked her numbers and expected proof that she had barely worked. Instead, her average heart rate was 187, and she had worked harder than most of the class, including the top athletes. Lawler decided he needed to start grading students more on effort than on results.
Why He Matters
In all, Lawler taught PE in Naperville for 35 years, and Naperville’s PE program came to assess students on effort rather than skill. At Naperville Central High School, freshmen in a lower-level reading group took a “zero hour” PE class before school, with workouts built around vocabulary words from their reading class. In 2007, Lawler testified before a U.S. House subcommittee about school wellness plans. Heart rate monitors are still part of PE at Madison Junior High, where he taught.
