Category: Middle & High School

This category focuses on how to effectively teach middle school, junior high school, and high schoolers. Learn more about how best to connect with and instruct students who are transitioning from childhood to adulthood, and how to motivate them to be physically active and make healthy lifestyle choices.

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Celebrating Physical Education in 2014

Given that we are able to watch sports all day every day, one must still appreciate Olympians for their pursuit of perfection, desire to better their personal best, and the dedication it takes to get there. After the classy ceremonies, breathtaking performances, and personal vignettes of athletes ended, I expected thoughts about the 2014 Olympics would end too. But, then some of the champions found their way back in the spotlight when Dancing with the Stars returned to the air. It was an eye-opener when they introduced the USA gold medal ice-dancers, Davis and White, a twosome who had been a dance team since childhood as competitors instead of partners. Then the mold was broken altogether when Amy Purdy, a double leg amputee snow-boarder who took the bronze medal in the Para-Olympics was introduced too.

The entire line-up got me thinking of physical education, where it was when I started teaching, the good things that have changed in our field, and what we should be celebrating today. Ann Purdy should be celebrated not only for what she has done but for what she can teach others. She lost her legs but not her spirit. She will probably be motived to test her limits until the end of her days because she embodies the philosophy of taking what you have and learning to use it to the best of your ability. Much of her spirit is inside, but someone had to teach her and they did.

Watching her deal with her limitations as she learned a fabulous dance routine, watching her perform it – and she was good – reminded me of my quandary when I started out teaching. My school district would not allow kids with disabilities to participate – period! Physical educators were told to have the kids sit out. At the time – and I am not ancient – I simply assumed that we didn’t have a disabilities program because my administrators were not up on educational law and just didn’t know better. Boy was I naïve.

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Celebrating PE & Sport

May is National Physical Fitness and Sports Month and May 1-7 celebrates National Physical Education and Sport Week. My feelings are many on celebrating PE and sports. After nearly twenty-five years of teaching and coaching, my emotions have run the gamut from excited to disheartened, energized to deflated, motivated to total despair. I’ve worked for administrators who knew the value and importance of physical health and wellness as well as those who looked upon “gym” as the irksome and intrusive mandated break in between “real” teaching blocks. I wish I had a quarter for every time a classroom teacher or administrator has said on a bright sunny day, “Why aren’t you outside? It’s so beautiful out! Just take them out and run them!” – I’d be a zillionaire, and probably very tanned!

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The reality is, it can be very hard to celebrate PE and sports when you don’t feel you have the support or positive attitudes necessary to feel relevant and appreciated. For me, it’s the students that keep me going, the occasional parent who lets me know how much I’ve made a difference in her child’s life, the student teacher who tells me that the many other programs that he or she has observed don’t offer what I do, or the colleague who once gave me a backhanded compliment by saying, “You work too hard and do too much.”

How To Celebrate

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The Health Hut: A Step toward Healthy Eating in Schools and Promoting Health Literacy!

When health and physical educators strive to teach students about active, healthy living, it becomes troublesome when there are unhealthy alternatives confronting them as they leave the school building. For example, what messages are students receiving if they can leave the gymnasium and at lunch time walk across the road to stores to purchase unhealthy food choices such as soda, chips and candy?

As schools move to become health-promoting environments and develop health literacy in students, it’s important to give students the knowledge of how to live healthy lifestyles. For years, vending machines have been placed in schools, perhaps even placed strategically in schools, so that students are sure to walk by them and be tempted to buy something. Similarly, stores often place snacks close to the checkout counters hoping that customers will be tempted to buy them, and food establishments often ask if customers want to add another food item to their order. These business style tactics to encourage purchasing can lead to unhealthy food choices or overeating.

The issue of vending machines, school concessions, fast food establishments, corner stores, prepackaged food items, etc. have been discussed and debated for some time. In this article, we’ll introduce you to an innovative and practical strategy aimed to help educate students and school communities on healthy food choices and support their health literacy.

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What’s in a Name?

Words can inspire a thousand pictures. Words have the potential to incite, divide, unite, create, and effect change. As a teacher educator, I often engage my students in discussions about the classroom environment and issues of safety and social growth. In recent months, I’ve started more than a few conversations regarding how to maintain the integrity of environments for activity and play, particularly as it relates to the topic of verbal pollution.

Verbal pollution refers to the use of words and comments that the majority agrees are offensive and damaging (Fisher, 2008). Today we frequently see these comments and values communicated through music, television, cyberspace and other forms of media and technology. Verbal pollution undermines the promotion of successful outcomes and has implication for our practices.

Through our upbringing many of us in our have been conditioned to ignore verbal pollution. If we don’t it gives the impression of weakness. Unconvinced? Consider one of the most frequently quoted English language idioms: “Sticks and Stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This rhyme, reported first in 1862, encourages a child victim of name-calling to ignore taunting, refrain from physical retaliation, and to remain calm and good-natured. But in today’s world, this well-intended phrase is both untrue and hypercritical.

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Online Physical Education: The Elephant in the Room

There’s a feeling among some physical educators that Online Physical Education (OLPE) has been thrust upon them. These same physical educators also feel that OLPE cannot contribute to a meaningful physical education curriculum experience. Despite these reservations, many states are now requiring high school students to take at least one online course before graduation (Brown, 2012; Watson et al., 2012).

Others make online courses available and accept them towards an earned high school diploma. In 2007, the National Association for Sports and Physical Education (NASPE) developed a position paper that identified NASPE’s preliminary position for OLPE courses. Today, students across the country are increasingly electing to take OLPE courses. Recently, former NASPE President Craig Buschner expressed his thoughts on OLPE in pelinks4u. This paper indicated that OLPE lacked ‘best practice,’ should address the same curriculum as traditional PE, and that hybrid/blended models of OLPE delivery may be best suited to the needs of public school students.

For some, OLPE is an oxymoron since the very thought of physical education taken online creates a contradictory image in their mind. Some, upon hearing about OLPE perhaps imagine students sitting in front of a computer completing reports or worse yet playing video games and turning in activity logs showing that they have engaged in physical activity when in fact they haven’t. For others, OLPE may conjure images of the humans in the movie Wall-E who had stopped moving and depended on technology to meet their every need resulting in a morbidly obese populace that had lost the ability and desire to move. Worse yet the prospect of OLPE raises fears that trained physical educators will not be needed as instructors in virtual settings that rely on technology rather than traditional physical activities, facilities, and equipment.

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What Do Physical Educators Do?

“What do you do?” Throughout my career I’ve been asked that question many times. I expect that you have too. If so, how do you respond? Something that I hope you NEVER say is “I’m just a teacher,” or “I’m a gym teacher” or something similar that diminishes the importance of what I believe physical educators do. I know my response to this question has changed over the course of my career and is often based on whom I’m talking to. But, as a physical educator I’m proud of what I do and I’m not hesitant to let others know that. So, I’ve listed below a few possible answers for you to consider the next time you are asked that question!

  • “I teach children,” then when asked what you teach follow it with, “I teach them the skills they need to be active for the rest of their life.”
  • “I am a physical educator and I know that what I do is important. There’s a lot of research now supporting what I’ve always known: Physically fit and active students do better academically.”
  • “I provide students a place during the school day where they can move, have fun, and know they are safe.”
  • “I am a physical education teacher and a role model. I like to share my passion for (walking, biking, tennis, etc.) because I want others to know the value and enjoyment that comes from being active.”
  • “I teach my students to treat each other with respect because I know it’s important for them to learn and practice this important life skill.”
  • “I am a member of my state physical education association and SHAPE America because I believe it’s important to support and participate in my professional organizations.”
  • “I provide my students with a variety of physical activity opportunities in order to help them find an activity that they enjoy and will pursue on their own.”
  • “I do more than throw out the ball! I use our National Physical Education Standards to guide my planning, teaching and assessment.”
  • “Yes, I do have some time off during the summer but it’s not three months paid vacation! During that time I go to workshops, take classes, and look for new ideas that help keep my lessons exciting and relevant for my students!”
  • “Yes I do get to wear tennis shoes to work! Don’t you wish you had chosen to be a physical education teacher? It’s the best job in the world and not just because of what I wear to work!”
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Ten (Somewhat) Easy Steps to Lower Off-Task Behavior in Physical Education

Over the years, educational researchers have worked hard to create effective teaching strategies to help teachers solve problems of off-task behavior in their classrooms. Despite these efforts, classroom management issues and discipline problems remain a major concern for most teachers. Numerous daily discipline problems and reports may reflect a classroom atmosphere disruptive enough to significantly impair student learning (Vogler & Bishop, 1990).

 

Though dealing with these issues is often difficult, newer classroom management strategies are showing success when educators depart from trying to control behavior and instead focus on creating supportive classroom learning environments. Clearly, a big part of the solution is preventing problems before they start. In this article we’ll revisit proven strategies and I’ll share newer ideas to help physical educators reduce off-task behaviors in our classrooms.

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