Author: Elizabeth Bolger

The Time is Now: Advocating During a Pandemic

(5 Minute Read)

Advocacy for health and physical education is crucial, now more than ever. During this global pandemic, we need to shout from the mountaintops how important health and physical education is for our student’s physical, social, and emotional health. The more we speak out and advocate for our profession, the more people will listen, inspiring change. Until physical education is no longer a marginalized subject and a critical component of every school’s curriculum, we need to come together and rally for our profession.

One positive outcome from teaching during a pandemic is that parents and guardians see first-hand the value of movement and fitness and how it enhances focus, attention, drive, and provides stress relief. Some physical education teachers have used this platform of teaching during the pandemic to showcase quality physical education lessons that include amazing ways of teaching physical literacy and connecting with our students. Parents are seeing physical literacy in action and are taking notice of all the changes in health and physical education from when they were children and how it has evolved.

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Things I Would Like to Highlight While in Quarantine

With the quarantine, I have definitely had a lot of time to think and reflect. It is 2:42 am as I write this article because sleep has been evading me lately. My mind races and it has been difficult to focus my thoughts. So here I am, trying to focus on the positives and contemplate things that I have learned during the quarantine.

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Our Health/PE Community is Amazing
The way the Health and PE community has come together to share ideas and help our students has been spectacular. I am so proud of our profession and the way we all came together to help each other during this pandemic. Our amazing professionals have been sharing lesson ideas, files, handouts, virtual field days, and virtual field trips across the internet. Normal lessons or activities that would be sold on a web site like Teachers pay Teachers or on their individual sites have been offered to our community for free. Our amazing professionals have shared with us editable files that we can adapt to meet the individual needs of our students. We have helped each other start our Google Classrooms, figure out Google Meets and Zoom, create virtual bitmoji classrooms, share documents and interactive videos, or just by offering words of support or encouragement. It has been such a joy interacting with other PE professionals. We are certainly in this together and it has been comforting knowing we are there for each other. Some of the amazing communities I am a part of are:

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Doing More to Recognize Students with Special Needs

We have made great progress as a society in helping students with special needs feel included. But we can do more. We must constantly assess our culture (i.e. attitude and beliefs about students with special needs), existing policies, and procedures to make sure we are doing our very best for our students.

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We must challenge ourselves to do all we can to make our students with special needs feel valuable, included and equal. We must advocate for our students with disabilities to ensure that they have the very best school experience we can provide academically, socially, emotionally, and physically. Lately, I have been reflecting on the way I give praise and to whom I praise. The other day I called a parent of a typical student. The purpose of the phone call was to let the parents know how proud I was of their child for the gentle way they guided a student with special needs into the partner yoga poses. The typical child deserved every bit of praise because of her nurturing and patient ways. However, it got me thinking. How many times do I praise the typical child for all the love, support, and help they give to my students with special needs as opposed to the number of times I praise my students with special needs for their patience, help, and encouragement of my typical students?

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SEL Activities in PE: Strengthening the Mind-Body Connection

One of the reasons I went into teaching physical education is because I wanted to teach students the power of the mind-body connection. I wanted them to develop strength not only in physical skills, but in the mental skills as well.

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I also want my students to learn that our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and attitudes can positively or negatively affect our biological functioning. In other words, our minds can affect how healthy our bodies are. The opposite is true as well. The things we do with our physical body (e.g. what we eat, how much we exercise, how many hours of sleep we get) can impact our mental state, positively or negatively. This results in a complex relationship between our mind and body.

When I was younger, I struggled with anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. I would allow negative thoughts to control me. I struggled with my own self-worth and I had a lot of difficulties managing my emotions.  Participating in physical education and sports gave me the opportunity, as a teenager, to work on my social-emotional skills and allowed me to eventually grow into the confident, happy person I am today. I am blessed to have gone through those past earlier experiences, for I see it as an opportunity to help teach my students and my own children how to manage their emotions and how to positively affect the mind-body connection. What a gift it is to be able to teach my elementary students these skills at a young age.

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Movement and Mindful Hallways: Creating a Culture of Movement

I have been teaching for about 18 years now and have observed many students struggle with focus and inattentiveness. In addition, my own son struggles with ADHD and motor tics, (there are times when he appears to want to dance out of his own skin). To assist him, my husband and I purchased a mini-trampoline, spinning chair, ninja line, door swing, and more. Our intent was to give him breaks to move during homework and studying to help him focus and attend.

There are many students like my son in our classrooms. I’m convinced that we do not provide our students sufficient opportunities to move throughout the day due to increased academic demands, testing, etc. Our society is becoming more sedentary with the increase of technology and video games. Students are not getting the daily Physical Education they need. And too many teachers pull students out of PE classes to catch up on work they have not completed.

It especially frustrates me when recess time is taken away to do “bonus work” in the classroom. Our children are already not being given enough opportunities to gain the sensory input they need for learning! We urgently need to address this. When a child’s need to move goes unfilled, it can translate into inattentiveness, lack of drive, and impulsivity. We need to provide them with many varied opportunities to succeed and to move.

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HANDS-ONLY CPR Training for Elementary Students

This is the 2ndyear I have been training my K-5 students, at Lincoln Avenue elementary school, in Hands-Only CPR. I am on the Executive Board of Suffolk Zone AHPERD and in the last couple of years we have been running an equipment share program for all our members. Suffolk Zone purchases equipment that our PE teachers have deemed needed but may not have the funds to purchase. We then have our members sign up to borrow the equipment.

Some of the first equipment we purchased for our share were CPR Manikins. Having spent over 20 years as a Lifeguard, Water Safety Instructor and Swimming/ Diving coach, I understand the importance of CPR training. CPR helps to keep blood and oxygen flowing and dramatically increases the chances of survival in those who suffer a cardiac arrest. According to the CDC, “heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S.” According to the American Heart Association, “88% of people who suffer from a cardiac arrest outside of the hospital die. However, when properly and promptly performed, CPR can dramatically improve a person’s chance of survival.”

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Ninja Warrior Night: Teaching Students to Overcome Obstacles…Literally!

I’m always looking for fun ways to motivate my students to develop their athleticism. I’m constantly searching for creative ways to have the students work on setting goals and mapping out plans to achieve them. I want to teach my students how to overcome obstacles and not give up. And I’ve discovered I can literally do just that with a physical education inspired version of TV’s American Ninja Warrior course!

TV shows such as Wipe-Out, American Ninja Warrior, Ninja Warrior Junior & Titanare wildly popular among our youth right now. The high intensity, high-risk style of competition is the reason for their popularity. These shows always have my children and I on the edge of our seats, hearts racing, muscles tensing, almost willing the athletes to get through to the next obstacle. These shows are inspiring children, teens, and adults to become more physically active and try new things outside their comfort zones. With this in mind, I decided a school-wide competition would be a great teaching tool to motivate my students to rise up, challenge themselves, and learn what they are capable of.

Every year, the students in my school look forward to our Giant Obstacle Course. Year after year, we set up in class different obstacles that are both fun and crazy while challenging the students’ strength, endurance, and overall fitness. So, this year, my co-worker and I designed the course to resemble the show American Ninja Warrior. We made our version of the quad steps, rope swings, rolling log, warped wall, Tarzan ropes, cargo climb, jumping bars, salmon ladder, unstable bridge, devil steps, rope junction, cliff hanger, monkey pegs, etc. I have to brag for one moment! The course was AWESOME! Everyday you would find my coworker and I playing on the course any free minute we had. Even some of the teachers and staff would come in during their class PE period and play.

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