Physical Education is all about Improving Lives

“Where is your passion?” I recently asked this of a group of physical education undergraduates who were halfway through their student teaching. In putting together my presentation to them, I wanted something that would grab their attention right away and get them thinking about their chosen profession. I think this question did the trick.

When I asked for their answers, I got many of the response I anticipated. Most of them said something along the lines of “physical activity,” or “physical fitness,” or even “teaching kids about sports and fitness.” But then one of these students gave me the answer I was hoping for. His answer was “to teach kids.” When I pressed him to tell me more, low I thought he would say something PE related. I was both surprised and impressed when he answered by saying “anything!” That was the answer I was hoping for and what I wanted to get all of the students to think about.

You see I believe that there is a big difference between our passion and our expertise. Our passion needs to be kids. First and foremost our main focus should be on the kids we are fortunate enough to see daily (even the ones that seem to go the extra mile to make our jobs difficult). We are there to create an environment where our students can thrive. As basic as that sounds I believe this should be our main focus.

Our expertise is in the subject we teach. For us and for those undergraduates it is physical education. Physical educators spend their entire careers honing this expertise. Many of us have taught for years, regularly reviewed our lessons and constantly made necessary adjustments. We’ve attended countless conferences to learn how to expand our expertise. We’ve picked the brains of colleagues always looking for a better way to teach something. But none of this is any good unless it’s aimed at our passion: Helping to improve the lives of the kids we see daily!

I asked these undergrads another question. I asked them to try to remember the best teacher they ever had in any subject and tell me what they remembered of them. Their answers were interesting. Everyone’s answer had something to do with the type of person this teacher was. Words like caring, comfortable, loving, and sympathetic came out. I then asked them if they remembered any content from any of these great teachers. Most all of them said “Not really.” Perhaps if I’d pressed them a bit they would have come up with something they were taught, but I think they got my point. All of these “best” teachers were remembered for their passion for kids. How they made them feel good about being in school and how they made them want to learn.

I often wonder what my former students remember of my classes. I hope they remember some of the skills they worked hard on. If they don’t I can probably rationalize away that fact by thinking that they used my skills from elementary school as a prerequisite for the skills they went on to learn in middle school and at the high school. But I also hope that they remember me helping them with something they were struggling with at the time, or when I celebrated a success with them, or even when I helped them with a math problem. You see, I’ve been around long enough and I live in the community where I teach, that when I run into a former student or a parent it’s become automatic for me to wonder what they remember from my classes.

Anyway, back to my undergrads. I then asked them to remember the worst teacher they ever had and asked them to share their memories. As you may expect, things like “boring,” “dull,” or “didn’t care” came out. Then I asked them if they thought if these “bad” teachers knew their stuff? They all said “Yes” that they were all experts in their field. My point was that if your passion is your content and not the people you are sharing the material with, you’re not going anywhere!

To many, it might seem that I am splitting hairs a bit. But I don’t think so. I’ve been in on many interviews for teaching positions and one thing we always wanted to gauge was the candidate’s passion for kids. Just getting to the interview stage meant that we could assume these people had a certain level of expertise in the field of physical education. Now, we wanted to see if their philosophy of physical education meshed with ours. We wanted to dig deeper and see if their passion was first and foremost for our district’s kids. In other words, we wanted to hire someone who would do what was necessary to create environments where our students would thrive. Would they be someone who would do what was necessary to make sure our kids learned the material, or would they just get through everything on the written curriculum by the end of the school year?

Back to my original question, “Where is your passion?” What about you? Do you make the effort to catch someone doing something right and celebrate it with them? Does your passion and expertise translate to your students enjoying learning to learn? Are you willing to step out of your comfort zone once in a while to try something new? Have you learned that mistakes aren’t always bad things, and can be used to help all of us get better no matter what subject we are trying to learn? Have you learned that winning isn’t always having the highest score? It’s often beating our own score.

I was talking recently with a parent of a former student and he was sharing how his son was doing in college and how he loved intramural sports on campus. This dad then said something I thought was really profound! He said, “All roads lead to city rec.” I thought what a great way of thinking! No matter the path we may take, competitive athlete, weekend warrior, or playing with your buddies in your free time, if we’ve learned to value physical activity and good health we all end up (at least I hope) in some form of recreational activity as we get older. We’ve discovered and become competent in an activity we like and that we like participating in.

I suppose the ultimate question for us, is are we teaching our classes in such a way that our kids recognize our passion for their learning and does that passion rub off on them so they learn to enjoy being active on their own? That’s my passion. What’s yours?