I was recently challenged to come up with an effective physical education “elevator pitch.” What would I say in a brief twenty to sixty second speech – the time it takes an elevator to travel 4-5 floors – summarizing what physical education is and why it’s important?

People often ask me, “What do you do for a living?” This is the perfect elevator speech opening! If you’ve taught physical education for a while you know that when you tell people you teach physical education, they immediately reference their own physical education experiences either as a child or as a parent. Sadly, these experiences don’t always reflect positively or even accurately what’s happening in today’s quality physical education programs.

So, when someone asks, “What do you do for a living?” we all need to recognize that we’ve just been given the perfect setup for an elevator pitch to highlight the merits of physical education. What will you say? The success of your pitch depends on your ability to explain what makes physical education important, and in less than a minute, hook your listener.

No matter your political preference, the results of the 2016 election surprised everyone. And while I don’t claim to be a political pundit – why would I since pretty much every prediction was wrong – I believe physical and health educators should learn an important lesson from this recent election.

Regardless of what you might think about the qualifications of either candidate or the two parties they represent, what’s striking is how effective Mr. Trump was and how ineffective Mrs. Clinton was in capturing voting support.

Please click here to read the full essay that was originally published on the GOPHER PE Blog. What do you think? Share your comments below this essay on PHE America.

Five years ago my wife and I moved into a new house. It was first time construction for us and turned out a pretty intense experience. Fortunately, when we started two years earlier we knew what we wanted the finished house to look like. Together, we sketched out a design. We then got our doodles translated into construction blueprints and hired a contractor. We chose a builder after looking at projects he’d previously completed. The homes were attractive, beautifully built, and he convinced us that he could translate our vision into reality.

Turns out we were right. We love where we now live and guests routinely compliment us on the beautiful wooden cathedral ceiling, open floor plan, unobstructed mountain and water views, and the house’s overall appearance. To date, no one has yet commented on how well our home meets the latest ISO or ICC construction standards. Now obviously, it’s important to know and follow proper building standards. Our construction crew impressed us with their skills, knowledge, and professionalism. As the house evolved it was obvious to us they weren’t just making up the various steps, but knew and were following some sort of building standards. We weren’t much interested in knowing or checking these standards but noticed that from time-to-time someone else would.

Foundation checks, framing checks, plumbing checks, electrical checks and so on followed the site, drawing, engineering, and other approvals. Now I’m not a builder, but I imagine this heavily checkered list was intended to ensure the builders followed best practices and met national construction standards: Presumably all with our best interests as future home owners in mind. And following proper building protocol was mostly a good thing, except of course when a particular standard was prescribed, yet made no sense in our situation. In construction as in other life areas, it turns out sticking stubbornly to standards isn’t always the perfect solution.

“It is vital that when educating our children’s brains we do not neglect to educate their hearts.” ~ Dalai Lama

2016 is shaping up as the summer of much discontent. While it’s typically a time of great joy for teachers and their students — an opportunity to relax, reflect, and recharge — with all the depressing news and tragedies occurring in the world, it’s hard to smile through it all.

As physical educators you might be wondering, “What can I do in the new school year to help my students better understand, cope, and ultimately excel in today’s world?”

There’s a memorable scene in the popular Sandra Bullock movie “Miss Congeniality” in which she’s asked, “What is the one most important thing our society needs?” The audience greets her first response with confused looks and silence so Bullock’s character quickly adds “and world peace.” The mood of the room instantly transforms. The crowd smiles and enthusiastically applauds. World peace was a vision that struck a very visceral emotional connection. What’s not to like about world peace? It’s something society obviously needs and for most of us well worth supporting.

Noticeably, the reaction of the listening audience wasn’t to pause and demand a definition of “world peace.” They had no problem understanding the intent. Similarly, who among us has any problems understanding what it means to be educated, hard working, ethical, trustworthy, competitive, dependable, organized and so on. We don’t need definitions. We get it. Sure, we each have slightly different perspectives on what exactly these words mean, but in general we GET IT!

Why then is the notion of getting kids physically active and healthy (which is what 50 MS represents) proving so hard for some people to understand and support? It’s no different from “world peace.” Yes, we can slice and dice the vision up in an effort to come to some sort of precise definition but to what purpose? Who needs it? Just as all of us likely support “world peace,” surely all PHE professionals can agree that “getting kids physically active and healthy” is a good thing to rally behind.