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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How to Help Students Develop Resilience in Your Classroom

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Sponsor Appreciation Article Series
6 articles that highlight PHE America supporters

The University of Northern Colorado Extended Campus offerings are tailored to fit your unique needs as an adult learner. Most courses and programs are delivered by the same faculty who teach on-campus. These are experts who keep up-to-date with—and create!—the latest advances in their fields. This article was previously published in PHE America in 2020.

Photo by: NeuPaddy (pixabay.com)
Photo by: NeuPaddy (pixabay.com)

Michael Jordan famously said, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Jordan’s quote indicates that his past failures were one reason for his success. Specifically, his perspective demonstrates the importance of growth and resilience in his achievements.

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Climbing Walls Promote Lifelong Fitness Habits Among Youths

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Sponsor Appreciation Article Series
– 6 articles that highlight PHE America supporters – 

Everlast Climbing was founded in 1991 with a focus on indoor rock climbing and hand holds. In 2008, Everlast Climbing became a part of PlayCore® – the country’s leading manufacturer of play and recreation solutions. This partnership has brought Everlast Climbing where they are today with a dynamic line of climbing walls and other equipment to inspire physical activity in more and more individuals.  The following article was originally published in PHE America in 2016.

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Make Lemonade out of Lemons: One Educator’s Approach to a Lack of Funding

Y_Ties_Banner_2Sponsor Appreciation Article Series
– 6 articles over 3 weeks that highlight PHE America supporters – 

Y-Ties is a simple in-school fundraiser that has supported over 5,200 fundraising efforts, across more than 2,400 schools, earning over 4 M in funding. Learn how Y-Ties can help fund your programs: https://www.y-ties.com/  The following article highlights one educator’s approach to meeting her funding challenge. The following article was originally published in PHE America in 2016.

As health and physical educators, it’s easy to feel frustrated by school district politics or sense a lack of support for your teaching.  I completely understand and as a middle-high school health and physical educator, I’ve been there many times myself.  However, I also often think that as teaching professionals we don’t give ourselves enough credit.

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CoachUp! Washington: Training 44,000 Coaches in SEL

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The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) and the University of Washington’s Center for Leadership in Athletics (UWCLA) are teaming up for CoachUp! Washington, an initiative aimed at providing social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum to all 44,000 Washington State school-based coaches and bringing more women into the coaching profession.  CoachUp! is one of 10 youth sports projects being supported and funded through the Million Coaches Challenge (MCC), an initiative of Susan Crown Exchange.  The goal of MCC is to train one million coaches by 2025 in effective youth development techniques.

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CoachUp! will take a multi-faceted approach to deepen SEL coaching practices across the state.  The evidence-based training will be offered both virtually and in person, ensuring that coaches at member schools are receiving foundational SEL principles and strategies through multiple avenues. The training will be piloted with a representative sample of coaches at the outset of the project, refined, then extended to the remainder of the coaches in the state by 2023.

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The Clock is Running on Breast Cancer Prevention: Tips to Share With Students

With our students focused on making the varsity squad, getting into their dream college, and which TikTok video just went viral; they are losing sight that their lifestyle choices can have a dramatic lifelong impact on their breast health. The mammary gland in young men and women undergoes significant structural changes during puberty. As a result, chemical and environmental exposures during the teen years can heavily influence breast tissue (Terry et al., 2019).

According to the National Cancer Institute (2020), one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and male breast cancer is on the rise. It’s imperative to highlight prevention techniques in high school. These are the top tips to share with your students to lower their risk:

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Transformational Leadership in Physical Education

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Leadership is a set of skills and practices that are available to physical education (PE) teachers. One of the leadership styles that I would like to introduce is “transformational leadership” because its leadership is highly related to fostering a positive environment, empowering students, and maximizing teaching. According to Bass (1990), four factors consist of transformational leadership: (a) idealized influence, (b) inspirational motivation, (c) intellectual stimulation, and (d) individual consideration. Each component includes meaningful values, benefits, and purposes for PE teachers. The focus of this article is to describe specific characteristics of transformational leadership and provide implications for PE teachers to incorporate and apply them in class.

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Idealized influence is about being a role model. Specifically, PE teachers should be skillful role models. Students need to be provided with a proper demonstration allowing them to improve performance and skills. Of course, it is impossible for PE teachers to master all kinds of physical activities or sports skills; however, PE teachers should keep developing skills, as well as acquiring new knowledge as much as possible. If PE teachers lack in some areas, they should seek training opportunities by attending professional development or conferences (e.g., SHAPE America/regional SHAPE conferences). PE teachers should be skilled so that they are able to demonstrate the techniques and skills as needed. Additionally, students are taught the importance of being physically active and life-long movers in PE (Corbin, 2002). Therefore, it would be beneficial for PE teachers to share their life experiences with students as role models. For example, PE teachers’ sharing experiences of taking part in any sports activities or playing sports can motivate students to increase their desire of being physically active (Kim et al., 2017). By demonstrating and sharing teachers’ personal experiences, students are more likely to accept the importance of regular physical activities. Transformational leadership requires PE teachers to lead students by doing, not simply by telling (Bass, 1990).

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Creating Content for a Global Audience: The Globetrottin’ ADs’ Student-Athlete Leadership Conference

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The positive link between athletics and academic performance has been proven over and over again.  However, in schools around the world, it is still commonplace for student-athletes to hear from teachers that they need to make a choice between athletics and academics. Student-athletes may hear, “You cannot get the grades you want if you play on the basketball team” or “You will not have enough time to get your homework finished with so many practices and games.” On the flip side of this, the same student-athletes may hear from their coaches that they can do both successfully, but with some requirements: solid time management skills and realistic goal setting. Are our students like a tennis ball in a tennis match, being hit back and forth between teachers and coaches?

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For some of our students, athletics is their only way forward. For those students that have their sights set on a top-notch university, they are sometimes told that athletics is one thing that can stand in their way of achieving their academic dreams. Athletics can be the only highlight of the day for some of our students and the only reason they continue to come to come to school.  So, how as educators and coaches can we better connect athletes and academics so students see the advantages of both?  Highlighting the important connections between athletics and academics was one of the goals of the Globetrottin AD’s Student-Athlete Leadership Conference but there were a whole lot more.

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