Gym teacher Marci Breed can still get down on the floor and do push-ups and other exercises with her students at James Hart School. Despite her agility, she’s retiring after 35 years as a PE teacher, 31 of those at Hart.
“I’ve been teaching phys ed and I practice what I teach,” she said. “I always feel like when you’re dealing with kids in general, they can’t argue with you if you’re doing it with them. I’m the first one to get on the floor and do curl-ups or push-ups. I know they see me going in and out of the fitness room (at Hart) … At my age I still walk the walk, so to speak. I still love it. I still love what I do.”
A graduate of Hart and Homewood-Flossmoor High School, she went on to earn degrees at Eastern Illinois University. It was at a career day at H-F that she learned she could study athletic training.
She earned a physical education with health education degree and went on to earn a certificate in athletic training. She also minored in biological sciences.
Breed taught at Sandburg High School a few years before that teaching position was cut. She returned to EIU to be a graduate assistant and earn a master’s degree in exercise science and a K-12 teaching certificate. Just as she was finishing her master’s, a position opened and Breed took the job at Hart.
Breed says it’s as if she’s gone full circle. Her students are surprised to know that as Marci Klenn she was a student at their school. She went on the White Pines nature trip when she was in sixth grade, she played softball at Izaak Walton, she made many trips to Dairy Queen. Today she’s teaching kids whose parents she taught earlier in her career.
Before District 153 joined the Illinois Elementary School Association for sports, Breed coached teams for other competitions. She coached boys cross-country, girls volleyball and girls basketball for 10 years, and several of those teams were conference champions.
Breed also was one of the organizers of the Hart fitness room about a decade ago. It started small. The district allocated $30,000 for exercise bikes and elliptical machines. As more equipment became available, the fitness center got a bigger space.
“We went from free weights in a small gym to this,” she said, standing in the space filled with more than 20 pieces of gym equipment. Several TVs are mounted around the room.
“We still have the original bikes, the original ellipticals and a lot came from a hotel and we added pieces here and there,” Breed said. When a class is in the fitness room, half are working on cardio-endurance, and the other half focuses on muscular strength.
“Our kids know that’s your bicep and how to stretch. Knowing how to get on an elliptical, knowing how to get on a bike, knowing what they need to know to increase their heart rate, knowing how to put a pin in and lift and weight train. I feel like we get them ready.”
The former personal trainer tells her students their activities there are preparing them for what they’ll use at H-F and later in life at a professional fitness center. The fitness room is open and available to staff after school. Some Hart athletic teams utilize it for training.
Getting through the COVID pandemic was a challenge. Breed remembers a few good walking videos she used in class. She used two monitors – one gave her a view of every student. For Breed, teaching during COVID “was tough” but seeing into her students’ worlds made a difference.
“There are certain kids you never get to meet” in the sense of knowing them, she said, but seeing them at home helped her relate to each student. She remembers it as “such a cool opportunity to get a glimpse of their home life.” Dogs would be on screen, and when one dog had puppies, “we all got to see them. I had younger siblings pop up, and some older ones doing exercises with us.”
