As 2014 comes to a close, perhaps you’ll have a bit of extra reading time over the holidays? Here are a few reading suggestions from the nearly 50 essays and teaching tips articles we published in pelinks4u in 2014. You can also of course browse them all in our Archives. Enjoy!

A Profession in Transition
2013-14 was a year of great change for our professional organization AAHPERD. Five national associations were integrated into the new SHAPE America. AAHPERD President Gale Wiedow shared with pelinks4u the reasons and motivation for these changes and his hopes for our professional future.

Is Physical Education Heading Towards Extinction or a Renaissance?

I’m embarrassed to confess that now in my 16th year of publishing pelinks4u, I’ve managed to avoid, actually intentionally avoided, almost any participation in social media. In 1999 and a much younger person, I was on the cutting edge of online technology. Facebook’s billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg was only 15 and probably a high school freshman. The Internet was in its infancy, still difficult to use, and its value unclear. A few years earlier, George Graham and his doctoral students at Virginia Tech conceived of a way to use the Web to promote physical education and in 1996 PE Central was launched.

Not long afterwards, I found myself on sabbatical planning one project but then being distracted and intrigued by the potential of the Internet. I saw it first as a way to link my college students with information they could use to improve their teaching skills. This idea then morphed into a newsletter sharing links, news, and opinions. Remarkably – at least in reflection – pelinks4u began as a weekly publication and continued that way until sanity set in and I switched to biweekly. Even more remarkably, it took a couple of years until the present monthly publication schedule began.

When pelinks4u started I did all of the information gathering and HTML coding myself. Fortunately, through the support of several generous site sponsors – many of which continue to support pelinks4u today (thank you) – I was able to get some assistance. Teaching colleagues volunteered to write teaching tips (also many thanks). But most notably Terri Covey began as the pelinks4u Webmaster while still a student. She’s continued to do it for many years now as a Central Washington University employee. Terri probably knows more about pelinks4u than me. Any credit I’ve received for pelinks4u actually belongs mostly to Terri’s truly outstanding dedication to the publication.

It’s official! The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (AAHPERD) is now SHAPE America. New name, new logo, new website. All of the national associations (NASPE, NDA, AAHE, NAGWS, and AAPAR) have been combined into one entity. It wasn’t easy but let’s hope the new society can refocus on what’s important to public school health and physical educators, and try to capture the support of the many thousands of should-be-but-aren’t-members.

Why aren’t they? That’s the Society’s challenge going forward: Giving people a reason to join and then continue as member-supporters. All of us are sometimes guilty of letting others do the heavy lifting for us when we should get involved. It can’t continue. Has anyone not noticed the threats to cut health and physical education programs and positions? In honesty, we probably deserve what we get if we don’t support our national and state professional associations.

But being a member-supporter has a cost. It’s not much, but SHAPE America needs to come up with a membership reason-we-can’t-refuse. It’s a challenge that’s just become more personal. At the recent national convention in St. Louis, voters selected me as SHAPE America’s President Elect. My son’s response? “Remember Dad, with great power comes great responsibility!” Impressive huh? Well it was until he confessed it came from an old Spiderman movie.

(This speech was given as candidate for President Elect at the 2014 AAHPERD/SHAPE America Convention in St. Louis. It has been edited for publication.)

“I’ve been asked to share with you a few thoughts on my favorite topic – the future – and especially what I think lies ahead for SHAPE America and the professions we represent.

First however, I am going to share with you some exciting personal news. If I appear to be glowing, it’s not just because I’m proud of the nomination to be your next President Elect or convention excitement. This week, while I’ve been here in St. Louis I became the grandfather of a healthy young girl named Harlow. Those of you who are grandparents know how I feel. As a grandparent, you go through a period of anticipation, concern, and finally relief then joy when this new tiny human arrives into your world. You realize that with decent parenting, good decision-making, and a little luck this child will live into the next century. And then it occurs to you, “What’s life going to be like for this child?” “What’s in her future?”

I write this month’s editorial with a mixture of excitement and great sadness. By the time you read this, if all goes well I will be the proud grandparent of a newly born healthy little girl. This will be my second grandchild. If you are a grandparent or a parent you’ll know how exciting this is. It’s a time of new beginnings, of wonderment and joy, and a reminder of how life goes on despite seemingly never ending stories of tragedies, set backs, and sadness. Simultaneously, just 25 miles from my home, rescuers continue to desperately search for survivors of the horrific landslide that in seconds swept away homes and ended lives alongside the picturesque Stillaguamish River in the tiny town of Oso, Washington.

Both personally and professionally, there seems no escaping a life destined to be a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, thrills and spills, joys and sadness. Last month, I reported a few professional successes and disappointments. A threat to empower ROTC instructors to teach physical education was rejected in California, but a similar proposal loomed in New Mexico. In Ohio, legislators supported a house bill not allowing PE and health to count as electives for graduation, together with a bill counting band, cheerleading, and athletics as physical education. And in my own state of Washington, Highline school district administrators now insist that newly hired elementary PE specialists must also be certified to teach in the classroom if they want permanent teaching contracts.

Brilliant! Let’s plan on using PE specialists to fill in for classroom teachers. That will surely boost test scores, never mind the quality of the PE instruction we can anticipate when classroom teachers take over our gyms. Did these educational leaders take early advantage of WA State’s recent change in the marijuana laws? Certainly, ensuring a quality education for Highline school kids wasn’t foremost on their minds.