Author: John Strong

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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50 Million Strong by 2029: How to Limit the Effects of Stereotype Thinking on Your Physical Education or Health Education Class as a Pathway to Achieving 50 Million Strong

A major concern in education today is the negative impact of stereotype thinking. The physical education classroom has its own social dynamic. But unlike in other academic settings, physical education settings can, from the outset, be especially intimidating for some students. These students, who I’m going to refer to as the “Outgroup,” share many common characteristics that experienced teachers will immediately recognize.

Outgroup members sometimes appear slow, weak, overweight or obese, awkward or uncoordinated. These students often lack confidence and don’t have many class friends.  Students who shy away from the ball or who stay on the periphery when games are being played fit this picture.  If our profession hopes to succeed with 50 Million Strong by 2029 (50MS), these students or more appropriately this Outgroup is a group that our profession must intentionally target. If we fail to engage this group a significant proportion of our student population will never realize the health benefits of physical activity envisioned in 50MS.

According to SHAPE America’s website 50MS embraces “A commitment to put all children on the path to health and physical literacy through effective health and physical education programs.” (2016). To succeed there are at least three key components students clearly need: skills, knowledge and disposition.  Without these, the goal of 50MS will not be reached.  Unfortunately, absent effective interventions to help them feel comfortable in our physical education settings, the Outgroup students identified above are unlikely to possess the skills, knowledge or dispositions to lead healthy and physically active lives.

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Navigating the Space Between PA and PE

This year at the SHAPE America Convention and Expo in Minneapolis, MN I found myself finally swayed toward accepting SHAPE America’s commitment to 50 Million Strong by 2029. I had previously feared for the vitality and longevity of the Physical Education (PE) profession in the face of the inclusion of Physical Activity (PA). I worried, as did some of my peers, that the broad acceptance and adoption of PA would spell the cheaper and less regulated end of PE in districts where school boards seem to be ever looking for ways to save a buck. But I have since turned over a new leaf.

I’m hoping that the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which ushered in the inclusion of PE in a “well-rounded education” (a definition which includes PE along with traditional subjects like mathematics and English found on p. 298 of the ESSA), will encourage regularly scheduled, professionally led PE in all schools across the nation in the near future. As a result, I now see PA as an integral sub-section of PE that should be embraced as a kind of “supporting structure” through which PE is strengthened outside of the school grounds and instruction hours.

I have come to this conclusion on the heels of a good deal of reading and conversational exchange among PE professionals. Therefore, my idea for this article is to share resource materials for easy access along with a commentary on their use or inclusion.

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Better Together Than Apart

Two years ago, we contributed to a presentation at what was to be the last “AAHPERD” convention in St. Louis, Missouri with a group of colleagues from the Diversity and Inclusiveness Task Force of NASPE. The presentation, Innovative Teaching Practices in Physical Education for Diverse K-12 Schools, gave us an opportunity to present a segment entitled Cooperative Games That Embrace Diversity.

After the presentation and the great discussion with attendees that ensued, we decided to revisit what we presented this past fall at our respective schools in an adventure education skills and secondary methods course. The main themes from the lesson included the language of acceptance of all cultures, critical thinking, creating interactions, intervening on student remarks, and modeling behavior for students. With these tools in place, we led our classes through some transformational work that resulted in students having a better understanding of the concepts of inclusionary and exclusionary speech as well as appreciating differences in others to the betterment of the whole. Our session ended with the quote, “We’re better together than we are apart.”

It occurred to us that what we learned might make for a nice article as we head into another school year, particularly in light of the current political landscape that has served as a poor model for youth on how to discuss and accept differences. With this in mind, we would like to present a few examples of what we taught our students with some notes preceding the activities and how we facilitated them.

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Turning Drills into Games

In December, I wrote about how Deliberate Practice can enhance the drill structure of youth sport practices. In the midst of the article I conceded that practices that appear solely focused on skill acquisition can seem a lot less fun to both player and coach. I went on to promise to detail ideas aimed at enhancing the fun of Deliberate Practice drills. This month I plan to deliver on that promise and look at ways to make well thought-out drills which follow Deliberate Practice principles remain effective while also adding some fun.

Several years ago, Lockwood and Pearlman (2008) wrote a fantastic article suggesting how to enhance youth sport practices. They included the top four reasons kids play sports in the first place: (1) to have fun, (2) to be with friends, (3) to learn new skills, and (4) to be active (Coakley 2007; Ewing & Seefeldt 1996; Gould, Feltz, Horn, & Weiss 1982). Since we got drill efficacy out of the way in my last article, let’s take a look at what can make Deliberate Practice drills fun in your practices.

Breakthrough Basketball sells an ebook with 60 fun drills in it (60 Fun Basketball Drills and Games for Youth Coaches). I believe there are commonalities to the games that are featured in such books (you can find more than one if you look online) that you can apply to your drills and liven up your own practices. With a little thought and application of the principles I’ll lay out in this article you can come up with many of your own “fun drills”. In order to facilitate a “fun practice” filled with “fun drills” consider (1) challenging your athletes, (2) making drills similar to games situations, and (3) varying the “have to” – “want to” ratio.

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Deliberate Practice Helps Improve Sport Skills

This November I was asked to present at the New York State AHPERD conference in Verona, NY about Plyometrics and Agility Drills.  I provided a similar presentation last March for the Western Zone conference held at Canisius College and the dozen or so participants seemed to really enjoy hearing the information and participating in the activities.  This month, I decided that sharing the principles and practice from this presentation might also interest PHE America readers.

More than two decades ago Anders Ericsson wrote in an article titled The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance that, “The view that merely engaging in a sufficient amount of practice, regardless of the structure of that practice, leads to maximal performance has a long and contested history.” It is my view that many coaches allow this concept to dominate their practices and diminish their most earnest attempts at improving the skill set of their players. The idea that players should get better simply by “putting in the reps” has driven one hard whistling coach after another to force unrelated and disconnected drills on players since before I started playing. The purpose of my presentation, and Ericson’s article, is to enlighten coaches about what drills to consider keeping and dropping in the face of Deliberate Practice principles. Ericsson persisted further in his article:

In contrast to play, deliberate practice is a highly structured activity, the explicit goal of which is to improve performance. Specific tasks are invented to overcome weaknesses, and performance is carefully monitored to provide cues for ways to improve it further. We claim that deliberate practice requires effort and is not inherently enjoyable. Individuals are motivated to practice because practice improves performance. In addition, engaging in deliberate practice generates no immediate monetary rewards and generates costs associated with access to teachers and training environments. Thus, an understanding of the long-term consequences of deliberate practice is important.¹

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Nutrition in the Gymnasium

Recently my wife, Kelly Strong, lost an elementary level health educator in her district. Losing this important resource made the district examine what it could do within the physical education curriculum to meet this need. The elementary physical educators created a committee to develop nutrition lessons they could integrate into PE classes. They met and looked at the current elementary health education lessons and modified them to be applicable to physical education settings. As you know, eating right contributes significantly to our health. What follows are some examples of the lessons the teachers developed to teach nutrition. They illustrate some of the many ways physical and health educators could collaborate to integrate curriculum in a more meaningful way for their students.

Lesson 1: Fruits and Veggies (k-2)

Student Learning Outcomes – At the end of this lesson the students will be able to: 1) identify fruits and vegetables, 2) connect fruits and vegetables to their appropriate sections on “MyPlate,” and 3) understand how many servings are suggested per day.

Introduction – Have the kids brainstorm a list of fruits and veggies on chart paper, “Which ones grow on trees/vines?” “Which ones grow in the ground?” (some kids actually think fruit snacks are a fruit!). Show the MyPlate website (or applicable hard copy materials) and explain that fruits will be red and veggies will be green during today’s lesson.

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