The Best Things about Being a Teacher

Yes…I know we have all heard the predictable old joke that state, "What are the three best things about being a teacher?" The response, of course, is, "June, July, and August." Certainly we all enjoy our summer breaks, as they provide the opportunity to reconnect with our family, our home, and even ourselves. The needed break from what can often seem like a "daily grind" in education is needed, and ensures, on some level, that we can return fresh and excited about the new year in the fall.

So as summer looms in front of us, and we begin the countdown toward beach trips, river rafting adventures, and weekly visits to the community pool, among other things … I hope we can all look back over the past school year and reflect on some of the "best things about being a teacher."

I am often amazed by the maturity of our student teachers graduating here at Radford University. As we conclude each semester, we take a moment to reflect on the student teaching experience and I ask each graduating student to share a particular moment (a specific lesson, child, experience, etc.) that makes them proud to be a teacher. Consistently these young adults impress me with their stories of working with a child (sometimes, but not always, special needs children) who, for whatever reason connects with our college-age students. Perhaps it is that they are younger or simply that they are a new face in the classroom.

Whatever the reason, my students often share something to the effect of, "the hardest part about leaving the school was that 'so & so' was so sad to see me go." At those moments, the realization hits that unlike many occupations, teachers have the very best job you could have - helping enrich the lives of young people. As physical and health educators we are even luckier - we get to share the message of healthy, physically active lifestyles and the joy of participating in sports and recreation activities.

I encourage all of us to reflect on this past school year and acknowledge the hard times, but also try to focus on those special children (young and older) we get to work with everyday. Truly, there is nothing better than seeing a smile, and getting a feeling of accomplishment that comes from our young people participating in our classes. Of course, June, July, and August are pretty good, too.

Jon Poole
Secondary Section Editor

We have all seen the bad news that the number of youngsters walking and/or riding bicycles to school is lower today than back when many of us were schoolchildren. Yet, while we advocate for more pedestrian friendly sidewalks and paths to school, we can also take heart that many of our students might be pet owners. Why is that important you ask?

Well…according to the "Dogs and Physical Activity" study conducted by the University of Western Australia, dog owners are seven times more likely to achieve recommended levels of physical activity than non-dog owners. Furthermore, dog owners' average 55 more minutes of exercise per week than non-dog owners.

So continue to encourage your students to walk or ride their bicycles to school, and then encourage them to walk the dog when they get home.

...FOR LARGE CLASSES

The National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) recommends class size in physical education be consistent with other subjects, and thus be no larger than 30 students in middle school settings, and 35 students in high school settings. While NASPE recognizes that many (if not most) secondary physical educators face class sizes larger than the targets above, they do offer some strategies for success in a publication entitled:

Teaching Large Class Sizes in Physical Education

	Small group work. Teachers are encouraged to group students into smaller units to foster teamwork and responsibility.
	Cooperative learning. Teachers are encouraged to utilize various cooperative activities that promote communication and problem-solving.
	Peer teaching/coaching. Teachers are encouraged to have students serve as peers to assist small groups in learning skills.
	Station work. Teachers are encouraged to design a series of station activities and have students maintain written personal records including task sheets.
	Small-sided games. Teachers are encouraged to divide larger class games into several smaller sided versions promoting greater participation for all students.
	Implement different curriculum models. Teachers are encouraged to try curriculum models such as Personal and Social Responsibility, Sport Education, and Teaching Games for Understanding.
	Individualized instruction. Teachers are encouraged to try mastery learning techniques which allow students to progress at their individual pace through sequential learning tasks.
	Class projects. Teachers are encouraged to divide the larger classes into smaller teams which work on projects such as fitness or sport portfolios requiring media or computer center work.
	Assessment. Teachers are encouraged to utilize peer and self-evaluation assessment techniques including task sheets, videotape, and peer check lists.

NASPE also notes that large class sizes result in an increasingly less safe and ineffective instructional environment. They encourage teachers to be advocates within their schools to push for the recommended class sizes to avoid increased risk of student injury, increased opportunities for "off-task" behavior, and decreased practice opportunities among others.

Source: National Association for Sport and Physical Education

I am often asked if, in my opinion, school physical education will ever be cut, or replaced, in secondary schools. My typical quick response is, "No. We are often associated with school sports program and sports are too important to harm."

While I generally do believe the heart of that statement is true, it does provide the opportunity to expand the argument of other issues, such as: why we need physical education; what role we really do have with athletic program success; what our mission is relative to obesity and rising health care costs; and what might be some "threats" to school programs.

One area of interest I see, for example, is the growing business of local community health clubs offering physical training geared for athletic success. I read with interest the May 2007 edition of Fitness Business News in which the Parisi Speed School was described as a $10-million business working with health clubs to build indoor sprinting tracks, and customized speed-training equipment, for youngsters predominantly in junior high and high school. Most interesting for me were the quotes from Bill Parisi, who stated,

I must admit this line of reasoning intrigued me a bit, so I read further. Basically the Parisi program entails training young people similar to how professional athletes train, which is centered on skill-related physical fitness components of agility, balance, coordination, and most notably speed.

The workouts look eerily like the pre-draft NFL Combine. One club owner in New York commented that several hundred youngsters have been involved in the program through his club, and he found them much more motivated than adults because the kids were interested in playing sports.

Along the same line as Parisi's Speed School are the Velocity Sports Performance Centers of which there are many across the country. The Velocity training programs similarly focus on speed, agility, coordination, strength, power, flexibility, etc. Their audience is also primarily the youngster trying to improve their own athletic performance and gain an advantage over other competitors not involved with this highly specialized training.

A simple tour of several Velocity training centers over the web provides a glimpse into a very impressive world. Small class sizes, world-class and state-of-the-art facilities, and personalized coaching sounds pretty good next to the typical junior high or high school physical education class.

All of this comes at a financial cost, of course, but it does bring up some interesting issues. Do these specialized training centers help or harm school-based physical education programs? Should we emulate some of these training programs and view these outside-of-school facilities as "teammates?" Or might some in the general public see these programs as a replacement for in-school programs?

Perhaps we can find a happy medium where we focus on health-related physical fitness components (i.e., aerobic or cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and body composition) during the school day as part of a regular comprehensive school-based physical education program, and then during the after school hours we provide a focus on skill-related physical fitness components (i.e., agility, balance, coordination, speed, reaction time, power, etc.) for those youngsters interested in improving their own athletic prowess.

If we are really lucky, of course, perhaps school districts would fund these programs by minimally providing a stipend (similar to a coach) for those physical educators interested in working in these after-school programs.

I encourage all secondary physical education teachers to look closely at this growing trend in the fitness industry, and continue to question what makes our programs special, and how we can, just like business people, improve the product (i.e., fitness & wellness) we are "selling" to kids.

Many exciting professional development activities are scheduled each summer. Below are several examples that may provide you a professional "spark," a chance to connect with professional colleagues, and often the opportunity to earn re-certification points, and graduate or continuing education credit.

Southwest Virginia VAHPERD/Radford University Workshop - June 8, 2007

National Coaching Educators' Conference - June 7-9, 2007

2007 NASPE Summer Conference Series - Throughout the summer

SPARK Conference Calendar - Throughout the summer

University of West Florida PE Summer Institute
July 16-18, 2007

NASPE Teacher of the Year Workshop - June 23, 2007

California Physical Education Workshop - July 7-14, 2007

Physical education's goal is to help students find at least one activity they really enjoy, help them develop adequate skill to participate joyfully at least at a recreational level, an understanding of rules and strategies, the ability to participate safely, and an understanding of how to get started, how to continue to learn, and how to stay involved and persist across their lives. - Dr. Leslie Lambert – Ferrum College

This section is dedicated to the review of a recent article from the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance that holds particular relevance to a number of the issues discussed in this edition of pelinks4u. "Is the Extinction of High School Physical Education Inevitable?" by Sarah Doolittle (Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, Apr. 2007) evaluates the current state of physical education in the secondary school setting and how it can be improved.

Is The Extinction of High School Physical Education Inevitable? – Sarah Doolittle

Doolittle discusses a number of important issues about a question that has gained momentum in our modern-day era of cost/benefit-analysis thinking and fiscal conservation - what is the future of physical education in the secondary school setting? Citing a feature from a 1987 issue of JOPERD that worked to answer/predict the same situation, Doolittle acknowledges the eerie familiarity with observations made by the author of this report twenty years ago …

Doolittle believes the physical education community is still struggling to overcome this problem, and notes the continued degeneration of the presence of physical education in the secondary curriculum. The 2006 Shape of the Nation report, created by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education & American Heart Association, revealed that while 42 states in the U.S. still require high school physical education, only seven states require two or more credits of this subject, while only four states require 135 minutes to 225 minutes per week.

Although Doolittle acknowledges the negative effects of such recent legislation as the "No Child Left Behind" Act (2001), which have put a great deal of pressure on non-tested subjects like physical education, she believes a look inward by the physical education community is needed in order to "right the ship," so to speak.

Physical fitness and education still hold a great deal of relevance to society in general, which Doolittle believes is made evident by the fact parents and students are spending funds on programs similar to those mentioned by Jon Poole in the previous section entitled "A Cause for Alarm or a Good Teammate?" The task of physical education in the secondary school setting is to inform parents, students, and society in general that it is capable of meeting the physical fitness and health demands of youth.

In contrast to the state of physical education in the secondary school setting referenced in the feature by JOPERD 20 years ago, Doolittle believes physical educators today have been armed with some powerful tools for accomplishing its mission of relevance - national and state standards, new assessments for evaluation, and the realization that students and school districts can be held accountable for student learning and achievement.

Doolittle is in favor of more stringent grading techniques in physical education that reward learning outcomes, rather than attendance and participation. She is also an advocate of promoting dialogue between parents, school districts, PTAs, etc., about this evolution in assessment techniques in physical education. "Holding students accountable with grading that is meaningful to them is a large part of convincing stakeholders that what we [physical educators] do is important.'

L-Tryptophan - nature's answer to Prozac
by James South MA

The "serotonin deficiency syndrome" is one of the most common and widespread disorders of human psychobiology in the modern world. Prozac allegedly increases the amount of serotonin in the synaptic gap that slightly separates nerve cells from each other.

The serotonin deficiency syndrome has been shown to manifest as a broad array of emotional and behavioral problems, ranging from depression, PMS, anxiety, alcoholism, insomnia, violence, aggression, suicide, and compulsive gambling.

Yet there is rarely a problem with the structure or "wiring" of the brain’s serotonin circuits. Rather the problem is caused by a chronic deficit of serotonin in the nerves that use it as their neurotransmitter. And this deficit in turn derives from various problems relating to the nutritional biochemistry of tryptophan.

Read more.

The following article is from 1998. L-Tryptophan is now available for purchase without a doctor's high prescription costs. It's still difficult to buy in drug stores, but a safe online store that I personally purchase through myself is vitacost.com. You will want to try L-Tryptophan for 2-3 months before expecting results. - Terri Covey, pelinks4u webmaster

The FDA Ban of L-Tryptophan: Politics, Profits and Prozac

In the fall of 1989, the FDA recalled L-Tryptophan, an amino acid nutritional supplement, stating that it caused a rare and deadly flu-like condition (Eosinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome / EMS). On March 22, 1990, the FDA banned the public dietary sale of L-Tryptophan completely. This ban continues today (1998. L-Tryptophan was made legal again in 2003).

On March 26, 1990, "Newsweek" featured a lead article praising the virtues of the anti-depressant drug Prozac. Its multi-color cover displayed a floating, gigantic green and white capsule of Prozac with the caption: "Prozac: A Breakthrough drug for Depression."

This concurrence seems "unbelievably coincidental." Read the rest.