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At Parker, we use the Adventure Curriculum for Physical Education series developed by Project Adventure (www.pa.org) as the foundation of much of our program (Panicucci, 2007; Panicucci, Constable, Hunt, Kohut, & Rheingold, 2002–2003). That organization's Challenge by Choice philosophy recognizes that any activity or goal poses a different level of challenge for each person and that authentic personal change comes from within. Challenge by Choice

creates an environment where participants are asked to search for opportunities to stretch and grow during the experience. [Students learn] how to set goals that are in neither the comfort nor the panic zone, but in that slightly uncomfortable stretch zone where the greatest opportunities for growth and learning lie. (Project Adventure, n.d.)

Incorporating this viewpoint into our physical education classroom offers a new way of thinking about how to assess students' needs and how to work in what psychologist Lev Vygotsky called the zone of proximal development—the place where optimal learning can occur (Nakkula & Toshalis, 2006).

For example, we play volleyball in groups of mixed gender, age, and ability. A student with solid ball-handling skills might be ready to try working with others to get the ball over the net using strategy instead of just slamming it back toward the other team; another student might be struggling to serve underhand, so I might let him or her throw the ball over the net instead of serving. Although I dread the phrase "I can't," I've learned to work with it. "You can't play volleyball?" I respond. "That's a big statement. Can you throw the ball? Can you help with the rotation? Have you tried learning to serve? To bump? To set?" We start from the beginning, and although not every student will become Olympian Misty May-Treanor, they often find out they are actually pretty good at something they would never have guessed they would be.