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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Purposeful Competition

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Purposeful competition has the potential to be one of the most growth-enhancing experiences for youth. The tragedy is that sports and other forms of contest have as much potential for harm as benefit, and relatively few coaches and physical educators have been prepared with the knowledge, training, and skills needed to avoid the pitfalls and guide youth toward purposeful competition.

What is purposeful competition? In short, it is competition at its best. To elaborate, it is useful to consider the two key terms: purpose and competition. Purpose, according to the developmental psychologist William Damon, is “a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once meaningful to the self, and of consequence to the world beyond the self” (Damon, Menon, & Bonk, 2003, p. 121). Well-designed sport experiences, which facilitate long-term goal development and “beyond the self” thinking, can provide a rich and valuable template for purpose formation.

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Lessons Learned from Teaching PE in a Pandemic (A Follow Up)

(2 Minute Read)

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Without a doubt, physical education has had a tough go, just like every aspect of life within the past 18 months. While the school year lent itself to many challenges, there are two big takeaways from this past everchanging school year that I will use to improve my teaching practice as education returns to normal, hopefully very quickly…

(1) Student Choice Was Key
Whether it was full virtual instruction, hybrid, or full in-person instruction the best adjustment I could’ve made to our classes was giving students the choice of which workout they could do. As local restrictions heavily limited what we could do in class; the bulk of activity in PE classes was bodyweight exercises. Students definitely missed the cooperative games along with competition and made no reservations letting me know that. In order to create some buy-in to the class activities, I went to a choice model (Shawley, 2014). While fully online Students could choose between workout A or workout B for each day of the week, upon returning to the building, when the entire class was completing the same Bodyweight workout, I would give students 4-5 slots to perform an exercise of their choice. This allowed students some individual freedom that they weren’t really able to have throughout the full virtual or even hybrid experience.

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The Important Role of Unstructured Play for Adolescent Athletes

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If one were to visit a city park today, compared to thirty years ago, they may not find many similarities. At least not as many similarities as differences. Children exploring their imaginations and allowing themselves to play freely has become a thing of the past. Instead, children may be located in a spot where the parents pay a registration fee in order for their children to participate or sitting in their homes not allowed to leave, or maybe a few playing at the local city park. In today’s age, there are so many extrinsically motivating factors that catch the eyes of parents who think it puts their children at an advantage in an ever so competitive environment. This motivates parents to get their children involved, if they have the financial resources, in all the activities they can to make their child the “best.” This begs the question, is it really the best thing for them?

CWU_HPE_750x182px v2The Numbers
According to Sabo et al. (2008), in 2008, 69% of girls and 75% of boys aged 6-9 reported participating in an organized sport over the course of one year. Recent reports indicate that 67% of boys and 47% of girls are on a team by age six (Meredith, 2018). This may seem to be a high percentage, but one has to wonder what the percentages would look like if parents/society were not so forceful in getting kids involved with youth sports too young. The most recent information indicates that the average length of years in participation of children ages 3-18 is less than three years and that 80% of young athletes have quit sports after age fifteen (The Aspen Institute, 2017).

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Outdoor Education Resists Coronavirus: This is How Creative Physical and Health Education Can Be

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As our sports teams were looking forward to traveling across Europe, ready to compete with international schools in Lisbon, Berlin, Valencia, and Paris, the first spring lockdown changed our lives. Virtual sport skill sessions and fitness challenges became the norm and placed athletes in front of screens rather than spending time on the courts, the fields, or in nature. As we started a new school year school in August, we were very fortunate to be able to return to campus. We were full of hope to start the fall season and jumped into practicing and playing games with local athletic teams from Zurich and Basel. Even though our community could not be there to cheer from the sidelines, they watched the live streams from home, a new highlight for school life. But, again, with a second wave of the virus hitting Switzerland in November, we were forced to suspend competitions.

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At that time, the International School of Zug and Luzern (ISZL) Athletic department together with the Middle School Physical and Health Education team was exploring new options for our students to enhance the regular school day. The focus shifted to recreational sports which would increase the time in the fresh air, where masks could be taken off when participants were socially distanced. We were amazed by the quick support we received when connecting with local clubs and authorities to investigate the outdoor education options in our region. The first couple of weeks, students played disc golf, Speedminton, archery, pitch, and putt-putt golf, no matter whether rain, shine, or snow. Our local resources became the new “gym.”

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How Health and Physical Education Have Evolved: Teaching Children from the Inside-Out

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[2 Minute Read]

As I’ve visited with many administrators and teachers across the country this past year, it has been fascinating to hear the stories of the many ways our profession has changed since the beginning of the COVID 19 Pandemic. It’s been transformative to see the ways we, as educators, have changed. Among the narratives that have made headlines in education around the past year, one continues to rise to the top as the way we will forever remember this transformation: We must teach children from the inside-out.

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Rock Climbing & the Tokyo Summer Games

[2 Minute Read]

There’s nothing more exciting to those of us that love rock climbing than the fact that it’s going to be in the next Summer Games!

Unfortunately, the pandemic delayed the games for a year. In anticipation of the Olympic Games this summer, why not infuse a little Summer Games of your own into your climbing program? Here are two competitive climbing activities that have been modified for a Traverse Wall®

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Advanced Rock-Climbing Moves to Try

(2 Minute Read)

If you are a climbing wall instructor or physical educator with climbing as part of your program, you know firsthand that some people are natural climbers. They instinctively put their bodies in the optimal positions to get across or up the climbing wall, while others need direct instruction.

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In order to help climbers progress, it’s good to know what to look for so that you can help your climbers improve over time. In the early stages, climbers should work to master the following basic climbing technique.

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