Having been in teacher education for almost three decades, I confess to a level of cynicism when it comes to university-based professional prep programs. Publicly, we’re challenged keep improving the quality of the next generation of teachers, yet simultaneously handicapped with expectations to meet rules and regulations almost guaranteed to ensure failure. It’s sort of a “we want you to do a better job, but you have to do it this way rather than a different way that would make more sense.”

Not long ago, I read about a state legislator’s effort to address the growing teacher shortage by creating alternative pathways to certification. I scowled. Even assuming admirable intentions, for those of us who’ve spent years actually struggling to prepare teachers, it’s a dumb idea. Sure, we can solve the teacher shortage problem this way. What could be easier? Just lower the standards for becoming a teacher. Set the bar at perhaps graduating from high school and teaching’s going to attract those otherwise destined for minimum wage jobs. There’ll be no teacher shortage. Problem solved. What’s next? Maybe it’s time to run for Congress or become a Presidential candidate?

Just as obesity is merely a symptom of inactivity and poor lifestyle choices, the teacher shortage has a lot more to do with unattractive salaries, stressful work conditions, little support, and frustrating bureaucratic interference. There’s no shortage of people interested in teaching careers. The problem is that we lose most of them in the first few years of their careers when they discover teaching’s a lot harder than it looks, support isn’t there when it’s needed, and too frequently our professional programs haven’t done a good job preparing new teachers with the skills they need to succeed and flourish.

With another year just around the corner, it’s time once again to think about setting “New Year’s Resolutions.” For some of us, losing weight, eating healthier, and being more active is on the wish list toward our ideal self- image. A new year is always a great time for a new beginning, but of course it would be even better if it continued throughout the rest of the year and accumulated over time into progressively better health. Setting the right goals is essential to improving health and feeling successful. The favorite goal for most Americans is losing weight. But losing weight is not necessarily essential to improving one’s health and in many cases any weight initially lost is regained in equal or greater proportion as a person gives up on their drastic diet/exercise routine. Successful lifestyle changes result from small consistent adjustments that can be maintained as part of an overall healthier lifestyle.

Making a commitment to live a healthier lifestyle is not as daunting as many people imagine. Altering small daily habits can result in lasting improvements in health without requiring a full hour of dedicated exercise time in the busy schedule that we all seem to share. Making consistent everyday choices to be more active can make all the difference in your health. Here are some simple suggestions that you can easily fit into your schedule. Choose one or a couple of these suggestions and practice them until they simply become habits. You will likely not lose drastic amounts of weight or put on tons of muscle, but keep in mind that your health includes many more aspects than simply how you look or the number you see on the scale.

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.

Let’s face it. We all have our own way to do things in our classes. For those of us that have been around for a while, we have methods that we are pretty comfortable with. Our kids seem to learn the material we present. They seem to be able to perform the skills we teach them. Why rock the boat? Why bother trying something new if what we already have is successful? My big thing is when something new comes along, does it fit what we are trying to do in the big picture. The last thing I ever want to do is to see something new, perhaps while attending a conference, immediately go back to school and plug it in the next day without first asking if it fits into what we already do. Just because an activity looks fun is never enough for me. If it’s fun and teaches something effectively, then I may have something there.

These are all good questions to be sure. I guess the answers depend on your comfort level, or on how much you are searching for the next great thing. I have to admit that for many years, I was one of those teachers who felt pretty strongly about what I taught and how I taught it. I felt that what I was doing helped my kids to understand and execute the skills that they needed to leave my building and then successfully build on those skills at our middle schools. My assessments showed me this assumption was true. Their skill level was where I thought I wanted it to be. There’s no need to change things up! Then my teaching partner went and threw a monkey wrench into my thinking. Kory McMahon is his name and he is a graduate class fiend! He is constantly taking graduate courses, always learning something new about our profession! If you have any questions about what I am about to describe to you, don’t hesitate to contact him.

He, like me was pretty confident in his methods. Then he came to me saying he was going to try an idea with video with our 3rd and 4th graders. As an elementary district staff, our three buildings had already developed some simple videos that showed our students what the correct form of the different skills we taught looked like. Showing kids these clips helped them see what they should want themselves to look like. They were pretty successful. But Kory wanted to take it one step further.

He did this in two ways. First he started to create tutorials on various skills that broke down each skill into manageable parts for the kids. He would show the video to the class when the skill was introduced. Then, if someone was struggling with a part of a skill, he would send the student back to view that portion of the tutorial again. Take a look here (the password is MottRoad). Today, we all individualize our instruction. The video piece allowed Kory to differentiate how he individualized his instruction. Listening to corrections is one thing; actually seeing it again is another all together!