Regarding showers and body awkwardness: I think the ideal scenario would be to have a combination of communal showers (gang-style) plus shower stalls available -- I can't speak for girls, but with boys I guarantee you'd have roughly half of them using the open room showers while the other half would prefer the modesty of private shower stalls. The other end of this conundrum requires inserting a body-positive, sex-positive curriculum once "puberty education" begins. The biggest obstacle here, of course, is that not every school has the resources to remodel locker rooms or restrooms in this manner...along with how so many of the local school boards get overly-puritanical related to the sex education content that teachers would be allowed to introduce within their school districts.

"Find a partner" is just utter laziness on the part of the teacher -- not just in gym class, but in ANY classroom setting -- and should be universally expunged when training new educators.