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.

Follow this category. New to RSS?

Falling in Love with the Outdoors…Again

Depending on your geographical location, the fall season can be the prelude to the arrival of more harsh weather to come or just a cooler spell following a long hot summer. This month, we want to share with you some fall activity ideas regardless of the weather or temperatures you might be facing.

For many of us, the comfortable temperatures of fall provide some wonderful opportunities for expanding our physical education and extra-curricular programs. It’s a great time to encourage students and their families to be physically active and especially to get them outside and developing a love and appreciation of the outdoors.

Extra-curricular programs allow us much greater freedom when choosing activities and for making community connections. If we truly want to get students to be physically active for at least 60 minutes daily, the time immediately after the afternoon school bell rings is a critical time to provide opportunities to keep children moving. After-school clubs and extra-curricular activities are a wonderful way to do this because many students enjoy the less structured type of activities that physical educators can present at such times.

Read More

How a “Beginner’s Mind” Can Improve Your Teaching and Coaching

Success enjoyed by individuals attempting something for the first time occurs so frequently that it’s taken on the familiar moniker “beginner’s luck.” But rather than luck, perhaps there’s more to these frequent successful occurrences. It’s my experience that success often comes because beginners aren’t encumbered with fears of previous failures. The Japanese term “shoshin” translates as “beginner’s mind.” Author Shunryu Suzuki commented, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”¹ As teachers and coaches, I believe there are advantages if we deliberately maintain a beginner’s mind throughout our endeavors. Often we can achieve greater results and enjoy deeper personal satisfaction.

Picture yourself at the beginning of the year. Your students/athletes are seeing you for the first time after an extended period and seem relatively happy about it. Some seem to have grown, some perhaps matured, and some might be brand new faces altogether; but at this moment all things are possible. Now let’s imagine two separate scenarios. First, you use experience to inform the decisions you make regarding class/practice structure, class/team management issues, and of course to shape your personal philosophy. Experience combined with a beginner’s mind allows us to clearly see how past practices can be built upon (e.g. enhanced time management during class or practice episodes, clarity in the pitfalls of wasting time with elements that bear little fruit in the broader picture, etc), and can better help us attain our goals.

In contrast, experience’s less helpful cousin is the expert mindset. The expert mindset creates a scenario where pessimism creeps in at the first sign of trouble. The expert mindset doesn’t use experience as a teacher but rather a predictor of fortunes to come. With the expert mindset guiding our thinking we bemoan errors during instruction rather than giving better explanations or trying different ways to solve problems. We are unhappy with our students and complain more. With the expert mindset firmly in place we tend to quickly abandon the “well intentioned” plans of high performance at the first signs of trouble and replace them with a cobbled together mishmash of something destined to cause the least amount of confusion. What’s worse is that in the expert’s mind, “It was all inevitable in the first place. You could see it coming a mile away!”

Read More

Grading as a Motivator

After reading an Op Ed essay in the New York Times about how routine it has become to give kids trophies and how meaningless, too, I thought of the year I transferred to a “REDBOOK” school of national excellence, with a much heralded principal who took the time to come to all gym classes to tell them that they are all “A” students, and make it clear to me that 98% of the student body passed “gym” every year. I cannot tell you how excited I was to be working with such a great group in such a great school. It took just a few weeks for the truth to reveal itself.

Classes, mine and everyone else’s, had 20% sitting out every day. After recognizing the extent of the apathy, and how none of my colleagues seemed to mind, I knew if I was to get the kind of participation I was used to I needed to change the culture – something which would take a while and likely be a shock to a few people. Knowing full well that it would be politically incorrect to rock the boat, and if I didn’t I would be a very well-paid babysitter, I instead opted to teach – not to cheerlead – once again. Again you ask? When was the first time?

Background

Read More

PE’s Got Talent: How to Advocate for Quality Physical Education…Really

Want a fall activity that is student centered, standards based, creates authentic, exciting, entertaining learning experiences that can be used K-12 and demonstrates the quality and importance of a Physical Education Class? Try a PE’s Got Talent show based on the popular TV series “America’s Got Talent.”

America’s Got Talent sparked my attention and inspired me because of the number of acts that included some type of physical activity or physical skill. Twenty-six of the sixty-one contestants invited to perform in New York City demonstrated some type of physical skill. The acts were amazing and included, dance, rhythmic activities, feats of balance, and displays of strength. Now children are emulating these performances.

Recently I noticed a group of students doing tricks on pogo sticks while another was riding a scooter in patterns around them. All in front of a panel of judging peers. In this article, I’ll explain how a PE’s Got Talent show can be implemented, and suggest ways for not only showcasing the benefits of Physical Education but also demonstrate methods for keeping students motivated to participate and hopefully be more active outside school as well.

Read More

Exploring the -isms: Tips and Techniques to Use When Teaching about Racism and Sexism

Introduction

Teaching is both a skill and an art form. Creating an environment that supports student exploration and growth can be a daunting endeavor especially when the topics of conversation are challenging. Creating a safe space where people feel comfortable to share their perspectives on sensitive issues is difficult. In the classes I teach, I often focus conversations regarding the impact of –ism’s – i.e. racism, sexism, classism, etc. – on thoughts and actions. It’s often challenging to facilitate open and honest discussions on subjects like these not only because the topics are sensitive to address, but because students are hesitant to share personal perspectives for fear of offending classmates.

Often my students will say things like, “Dr. Van Mullem….Why do we have to talk about this stuff? These things (i.e. racism, sexism, classism, etc.) are no longer a problem.” Many people are uncomfortable with exploring societal –isms because the -isms, in fact still are a problem. Society continues to battle prejudice every day.

Read More

Drug Abuse Among People with Disabilities

Not infrequently, people with disabilities receive some form of medication prescribed by their physician with the intent being to assuage pain. This is a natural route for a person with a disability, seeing as they more likely than not will experience some form of pain (be it physical, mental, or emotional) on a regular basis. However, an issue arises when the drugs that an individual takes become abused.

The adverse effects of drug abuse produce countless consequences for those who abuse them, disabled or not. As such, research has been conducted that attempts to determine the background behind abuse as well as factors that play some type of role. When disabled youth become the focus of this discussion, a new realm of possible outcomes arises. How are the social relationships of disabled children and their peers affected? How do parents and teachers deal with situations stemming from differences among students? What is the role of a health educator or exercise therapist in this population?

This particular paper will discuss drug abuse among people with disabilities. In a more general sense, it will discuss disabilities of individuals in the adolescent stage of life. Results of research will show the examination of the characteristics of drug abuse and its prevalence in both the overall population and the youth cohort. It will place a scope on drug abuse in these disabled populations and briefly mention preventive measures. Furthermore, this paper will expose the recurring fact that there is limited research in and around this topic. As such, the conclusion will attempt to explain what can be done in response, and why changes should be implemented. Throughout the paper, exercise therapy techniques will be mentioned and validated.

Read More

Use Your School’s Physical Education Program as the Mother-Lode For Building Your Sports Programs

Interscholastic sports coaches all want to win. We all want to have the best team, the best players, and have our team compete for regional or state championship. One of the best ways to do this is to use your school’s physical education program to identify and recruit athletically talented students.

 

Over the years, in my role as athletic director for a very large school district with multiple schools, I’ve witnessed every level of athletic performance in all the sports we offer. Invariably, when I speak to those coaches with poor performance records they lament about the lack of talent in their school (e.g. “We are in a down cycle for athletes”), the “bad attitude” of their players, or the lack of desire among their students to play sports.” But when asked about what they are doing to get students out for their sports, these coaches give vague responses and rarely share with me any specific strategies they are using to find, recruit, or develop their talent base.

Read More