Promoting Your Physical Education Program

This article is the first part of a two part series. The second segment will be published in the next issue of PHE America.

Do you ever feel that as a PE teacher you are the “best kept secret” around? You know that what you do and what you can offer children is vital. It’s hard to believe that others don’t really know or understand what you are really all about. If only they would listen!

Well guess what? Why wait? Why not take it upon yourself to explain to others the importance of what you do? But here’s the key: To be effective you have to do it in the context of how you fit into what they are trying to do, whether they be kids, staff or parents.

To those who don’t know any better, you are just a scheduled break in a classroom teacher’s day. Now let me preface this by saying that certainly this is not the case everywhere. There are schools, administrators, and teachers out there who understand the importance of our subject matter and respect its place in the school as a whole. If you are a part of one such building or district, congratulations! Your hard work spent promoting your program has been successful. Keep up the good work! Today, I’m hoping I can offer you a few more insights into how you can continue to promote your program. For those not as are successful, read on. I’m going to try my best to share some tips for promoting what you do on a daily basis in an effort to gain the respect that you so richly deserve. And in my opinion, it all starts at the ground level, our students!

What knowledge and skills do you want your students to leave with as a result of your program and how will you measure success? Are your lessons and scaffolded-curriculums designed to make your students physically stronger, more aerobic, more flexible? Is your teaching intended to help your students enjoy movement and to get better at it? Do you want your students to understand the connection between fitness and academic achievement?   Are you convinced that as students become fitter, their brains work more efficiently and effectively?

All of the above are almost certainly part of your thinking, but a key question to ask yourself is whether as a result of what you’re doing your students actually understand and internalize your intent?  Can they see how it relates to their lives? In other words, do we have a solid answer for them when they ask, “why do I have to do this?” or “I don’t like football, why do I need to know what a post pattern is?”

Connect to Things Important to Them

We must resist the temptation to say, “Because I said so, “or” Because it’s in the curriculum.”  We need better answers than these.  We need answers that relate directly to each of our students. We all know that we have some kids that just love to be active.  Connecting what we do is easy for them.  They enjoy movement for movement’s sake.

We also all have kids that question most everything we cover.  It’s easy to get frustrated by the constant barrage of questioning. “I don’t like this,” “Why do we need to do this?”  This list can go on and on.  As annoying and frustrating as these questions can certainly be, the best way to deal with them is to have an appropriate answer to them that relates directly to the students own experiences. As teachers, it’s up to us to make these connections for our kids, before expecting them to make them for themselves.

For example, we need to tell students that being physically active has benefits beyond the gym, or field.  Their body will work better.  Not unlike a car, if you let it get run down, it will still work, but not as well as you would like or need.  It’s the same with their body. The trick comes when you try to get them to take this seriously. They are still young and invincible at least in their own minds.  Taking care of themselves is not really important to them. They don’t yet see a need. So it’s important that we put what we have for them into a context they can grab onto.

Students who like playing outside with their friends, can understand how being aerobic in your class helps them when the weekend comes and they want to keep playing without getting tired and having to stop.  Now, every time they stop to tell you that they are “so tired,” or “so sweaty” you can respond by enthusiastically saying GOOD FOR YOU!!  Get the message across that getting sweaty is a good thing. It’s not gross. Help them understand that getting tired with you today will make them stronger tomorrow.  Ask them if any of them want to get stronger. When all of their hands go up, tell them “Good, you’re all in the right place!”

Make Connections Through Concepts

Practice students do with you such as learning to throw a ball correctly can apply to so many other things that they like to do.  They may not like football.  That’s fine.  They don’t have to be in love with everything you teach.  You just want them to eventually find something that they like to do on their own.  Soccer may be their “favorite” activity. Okay, now we just need to show them how using a football can connect to something else, say soccer.  Using “follow-through” for example.  For them to make a football go where they want it to go, they need to learn to follow through correctly toward their target.  Once they understand that concept, they can apply it to kicking a soccer ball. A follow through is a follow through, whether it is with their hand or their foot. The context may change but the concept is the same.

What if they don’t like floor hockey, but they love basketball.  Control can easily be your connection between the two activities.  Control with a hockey stick and puck is keeping the puck always within two steps of you, while keeping your head up, and looking where you are going. That concept can easily be applied to basketball.  Now they still know that control, this time with a basketball is bouncing it while keeping it within two steps of them, looking up to see where they are going. The same idea can also be applied to control with a soccer ball.

All of the character education you do each day has meaning to your students’ lives as well. Instead of simply following the rules in class to show that you have good sportsmanship take it a step farther. Connect for them that seeing someone else help somebody up that they accidently knocked over, or giving some friendly help on a skill is something they should also want to do.

The key is to put your instruction in a context students can relate to. How about inviting a friend over to their house to play.  Ask them, “Would they want to play with someone that helps them up if they fall?”  Or would their mom be happy if they invited a friend over to play that always wanted to be first? We know these answers and kids do to. But now, your emphasis in your class has a direct carryover to students’ lives at home.Yes, they want a friend who would help them and yes, they would want others to see them in this way so they get invited to someone else’s house to play. You’ll be pleasantly surprised and impressed how your kids take to this and internalize it.

Fitness and the Brain

All that you already do and teach about fitness and its relationship to wellness, health, and learning can also go right here. We have a tremendous amount to give to our students, their families, and to the community in general. Envision your entire program embracing current research that tells us that the better one’s fitness level is the better one’s test scores will be. You can also apply the current neurological research that says that once someone reaches a moderate level of sustained physical activity (within a target heart rate range), neurogenesis actually takes place. Brain cells actually multiply and the synapses between those cells actually both increase in number and efficiency. Sounds like a pretty good deal for all educators, not just us! While exercise is not a “magic pill” that will automatically make you smarter, science suggests that it will ready one’s brain to assimilate information easier. Show people that your classes are designed to reach this aerobic threshold. Again, you are not just holding your program to the district’s standards and expectations, you are basing what you do on current research findings. A pretty good selling point, I would think!

Envision this as an opportunity to show how you are readying your students’ brain for the rest of the school day. Make the connection between a morning physical education class and the chance to function at a higher level in the classroom later that morning. As John Ratey tells us in his book Spark, The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, physical education can be viewed as “Miracle-Gro for the brain!” Incidentally, if you haven’t read this book it dramatically covers exercise’s effects on learning, stress, anxiety, depression, attention deficit, and other areas. It begins by describing the physical education program in Naperville, Illinois that many of you may already be familiar with, and how they were able to expand the acceptance and importance of their PE program by making the connection between exercise and learning. It’s a must read for all physical educators.

Emphasizing what increased fitness does for student bodies helps make connections. It is no longer just getting stronger for strength’s sake, or getting more endurance just to be able to run longer. Now students understand that more endurance will enable them to focus longer in the classroom without starting to doze off. Or how the increased circulation of oxygenated blood to their brain lets them learn more effectively. Learning their spelling words, or math facts will come easier. Again it’s something that they can really appreciate.

(Part II of this article will appear in the February edition of PHE America)