What Should We be Doing in Physical Education?

After many years as a physical educator, I’ve learned that three key ingredients have to combine for students to successfully learn athletic skills or improve their physical abilities; potential, effort, and opportunities. Eliminating or limiting any of these parts drastically reduces a student’s chances of success. Even more importantly, I’ve also learned that as a teacher I can most directly influence the creation of learning opportunities.

Potential involves a combination of genetic factors, environment, and prior experience with the skill being attempted. For example, it’s likely that a student who is shorter will find it difficult to out-rebound a taller player. People who tend to be better jumping hurdles have longer legs and gymnasts tend to be shorter and muscular. When it comes to environment and prior experience, if I have students who have spent time at softball tournaments watching parents and siblings play, they tend to have greater know-how and aptitude when it comes to swinging bats versus peers who have never held a bat or seen a game.

We also know from research that there tends to be a transfer of skill between certain types of activities. Doing activities that have similar elements to previously learned skills affects how one performs. Students in my classes that pick up unicycling the quickest tend to be skateboarders first, horseback riders second, gymnasts third, followed by everyone else. In all likelihood, they learned faster because of their prior involvement in balance oriented sports. Being familiar with the environment, like surfers living near the ocean or skiers in the mountains, influences people’s potential to achieve. A Sherpa used to living at a higher altitude has a body better prepared to climb higher on Mount Everest. Clearly, physical educators and coaches have very little control over genetic and experiential factors such as these that affect a student’s performance potential.

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Integrating Common Core Standards into Physical Education

The Common Core is a national movement to adopt common standards and assessments for English language arts and mathematics. These standards aim to create assessments that will not vary among states and will determine whether students are meeting those standards. Common learning goals provide a clear direction for what educators and parents should aim for. It creates a level playing field for all students independent of the state they reside in. Common Core Standards are designed to make the student college and career ready. The goal is to have the students succeed in a global economy and society. Students are provided with rigorous content that creates an environment in which they have a deeper level of understanding.

A common response when physical education teachers are told that they need to incorporate English Language Arts and Mathematics into our curriculum is frustration. We’ve become accustomed to doing things that work well for our students, and us and heard the call to keep our students moving as much as possible. Then about the time we get comfortable with what we’re doing, it seems that learning standards change or a new curriculum is adopted and we’re expected to do something different. The adoption of the common core standards has brought a huge paradigm shift in education. Teachers are being asked to get their students to think in different ways and to demonstrate a deeper level of understanding. With the common core’s primary focus on English Language Arts and Mathematics, physical educators, not unexpectedly, are concerned about how this is going to affect their teaching.

As states and school districts deliberate ways in which they can effectively integrate common core standards into instruction, it’s vital for physical educators to be part of the discussion. Something we should have learned from the introduction of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) more than a decade ago is that we put the future of our profession in a precarious state if we allow ourselves to be excluded from educational reform efforts.

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Advocating for our profession. Is anyone listening & do we really need to do it? (Part 1)

We have all had the following experience; you have just finished what you felt was an outstanding presentation to your students and as you gaze at their faces you would bet your next paycheck that not a one of them really listened to anything you just said. Interestingly, if you made that bet you would likely lose that paycheck because most of us who have taught for a fair length of time have also had another type of experience. Years later, a student you viewed as a “slacker” and who you would have sworn was not taking your lessons to heart comes back to visit, and much to your surprise they are in great shape and doing well, and tell you how much your PE class helped them.

Advocating for your profession, similar to teaching, can sometimes seem like a fruitless effort. While passionately advocating for what we believe in we secretly doubt that the message is getting through. Advocacy is also like teaching in that the results of what we do are rarely immediate and almost never predictable. Trying to predict when and if that student who appeared disinterested in your classes will take your message to heart is impossible but we deliver the message anyway. To further our chances of success most teachers also learn to deliver information frequently and consistently. When I taught middle school our 6th graders did not really seem to understand the sermon of health and fitness that I was preaching but somewhere in the following three years, after repeated exposure, I discovered that the vast majority of them saw the light and started to understand the importance of maintaining their health and fitness.

Recently I went through an advocacy scenario that followed this pattern. My district eliminated one of our two elementary school physical education positions. I wrote a letter to the superintendent before it happened and advocated for the re-instatement of the position after it had been eliminated. No immediate result was evident and I was sure that the message had fallen on deaf ears. One year later the position was restored. Now I am not claiming that my advocacy alone accomplished this or even that it was the leading cause (many other people also spoke up including elementary class room teachers), but it was part of the effort and in the end someone listened.

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2013: What Has Happened In Physical Education?

As we near the end of 2013, I decided it would be interesting to highlight some of the year’s most interesting and impactful professional events. Here’s my top 10 list:

    1. 2012 Shape of the Nation Report: Status of Physical Education in the USA
      Okay, it was actually published at the tail end of 2012 but since it only happens every couple of years this interesting survey gives a status update of physical education in American schools. Checkout what’s happening in your state and around the country.
    2. School Health Policies and Practices Study 2012
      Despite fears that physical education programs are in decline, this study from the CDC suggested otherwise. A 10% increase was reported in the percentage of school districts requiring elementary school physical education over the past 12 years. At the middle school level there was almost a doubling of the percentage of states providing lesson plans and tools for evaluating students’ progress. And nationwide there was a 20% increase in districts adopting policies requiring schools to follow national, state, or district PE standards.
    3. Institute of Medicine Report: Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School
      It’s always nice to have others outside the profession advocating for what you do. What better than to have the highly respected Institute of Medicine, not only recommend 60 minutes of daily physical activity for schoolchildren, but also to suggest to the Department of Education (DOE) that physical education should be designated as a core school subject. Here’s a summary of the report’s recommendations.

  1. Let’s Move, Active Schools
    Who better to advocate for physical education than the wife of the American President? In the creation of this new school-focused initiative, Michelle Obama succeeded in bringing together businesses and school focused organizations including AAHPERD. With Nike committed to a $50 million five-year supporting donation, physical educators have a unique but time-limited opportunity to transform the physical activity climate of their schools and make physical education the foundation.
  2. American Academy of Pediatrics Endorses Crucial Role of Recess
    This esteemed medical authority highlighted the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social benefits of recess, noting that it afforded a time for children to rest, play, imagine, think, move, and socialize. The Academy noted that research has found that after recess children are more attentive and better able to perform cognitively.
  3. Obesity Changes: Mixed Messages
    The year in obesity saw some rare positive news with a report of declining obesity trends among preschool children. Conversely, we learned that more than a third of students in Western New York State are overweight or obese. It was further reported that obesity continues to be problematical among military personnel and more and more are failing to meet required fitness tests. Worryingly, another study suggested that obesity was likely to shorten life by nearly 10 years for Americans.
  4. New National Physical Education Standards Released
    In 1986, NASPE defined what a “physically educated individual” looked like. Shortly thereafter, the profession saw the creation of national standards – a huge boost that put us on par with other academic content areas. This year witnessed the publication of new standards that most significantly have adopted the phrase “physical literacy” as a key component.
  5. PEP Grants Continue to be Awarded
    For the 13th successive year the US Department of Education supported the development of quality physical education through its PEP Grant Program. This year there were 60 recipients receiving a total of nearly $32 million.
  6. AAHPERD Unified
    After years of painstaking deliberation and debate, the alliance of five national professional associations that included NASPE agreed to unify to form one national association. With the majority of Alliance members working in physical education, the new association has adopted the vision statement of “Healthy People – Physically Educated and Physically Active!”
  7. SHAPE America Created
    It might take a little getting used to, but the new name adopted in November for AAHPERD is the Society of Health and Physical Educators – SHAPE America. The thinking behind the word “shape” in addition to it being an easy to remember acronym, is that our new professional Association will focus on influencing and communicating the value of what we as members do.

Well that’s my 2013 year-in-reflection list. Perhaps there were other professional events you’d choose to include? Well, you have the chance! At pelinks4u we love to hear your views and share your news. If something is happening in your state or school district that you think might interest your teaching colleagues let us know. We’d especially like to include stories illustrating exemplary physical education programs and teachers. Published stories on schools are great public relations and advocacy events. Please contact us with your ideas.

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How Athletic Directors Can Cope With Rheumatoid Arthritis

Introduction

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that affects the joints and synovial fluid of the joint (CDC, 2010). According to the CDC, in 2005 1.5 million people in the USA were affected with RA. It’s a disease that presently cannot be cured and treatment is not always effective. RA inflames the infected joints and with inflammation comes chronic pain (CDC, 2010). In addition to pain to the joints, RA makes it harder to use them. It can affect people at any age and is not age specific. This is problematic for Athletic Directors because the pain has to be dealt with while working in an often physically challenging environment.

The Disease Physically, Mentally, and Spiritually

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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.

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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!”

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