Time spent at school is a highly influential time for young students due to the long hours they spend at school. Schools often adopt strategies that foster positive development in their students such as after school programs to extend the amount of time available to implement such strategies. Unfortunately, public schools in low socioeconomic districts typically do not have available resources for successful implementation of such strategies. Reflective Educational Approach to Character and Health (REACH) is an after-school physical education (PE) program that has positively impacted low-income urban areas to provide a safe, social environment to learn and interact with coaches who facilitate character development, literacy enhancement and fitness education through sport participation.

There is plenty of quantitative evidence, and frankly anecdotal as well, that attitudes decline toward PE as students get older…but why is that? This article examined student attitudes through a qualitative lens, actually asking the students that question of “why?”