SK8 & Cre8 - S.C. school offers skateboarding for P.E. class

Our friends at Fuzzco are decorating some skate decks as part of a fundraiser for the Charleston Charter School for Math and Science. They are the first school in South Carolina to offer skateboarding for P.E. Which sounds awesome to me. Why not offer some sports that the kids are into? I think parkour will follow soon after. The biggest problem for most schools is probably finding someone willing to teach skateboarding (or parkour). Also, the facilities (and insurance). Fortunately, it sounds like the school will be near the new skatepark being built on Meeting Street.

If you are an artist and want in on the fundraiser, check out the website, fill out a form, and pick up a free skateboard if you’re in Charleston. The art opening and auction are in March.

Some quotes from the page:

Skateboarding is a goal-oriented activity, rewarding only those willing to put in hours of work. The feeling of landing a trick after thousands of tries is one of pure elation, though most skateboarders never let it show.

I hadn’t thought about this, but this is something that is really important to foster with students. So many of my kids will just give up as soon as something appears difficult. Maybe the persistence and attitude of try-try-again first discovered through skateboarding and challenging video games will eventually translate into their real lives (working, living with a spouse, parenting, etc.). Let’s hope.

Charleston bred, internationally acclaimed artist, Kevin Earl Taylor attributes his roots in art as well as his artistic inspiration to skateboarding. Taylor writes, “our creative life was nurtured through skateboarding. Little did we know, but the act of improvising hours of fun from society’s detritus would train our minds to explore the potentiality of our surroundings. Skateboarding was a self-expressive mode, in which we developed individualities and preferences. Through it and the surrounding atmosphere of counter culture, we learned the mechanics of introspection. It was something we did together, but by ourselves. We all had our distinctive styles then, just as we do now. I remember building a ramp using found scraps of wood. For a couple of hours, we’d scoured the ground at the junkyard on Sullivan’s Island, each of us collecting an artillery of rusty, bent and nearly broken nails. With half of a broken brick, we took those and hammered them back into shape. We had learned how to design, conceptualize and construct what we saw in our heads. In 1987, we called them ramps, but now we know, they were indeed our earliest original works.”