Promote
Physical Education By Making Connections
written by Tom
Winiecki, Mott Road Elementary School, Fayetteville, NY
As
a public school physical educator do you ever feel that you
are the "best kept secret" around? Because what
you do and what you offer children is so vitally important,
do you find it hard to believe that no one really knows, or
understands what you are really all about? Do you sometimes
think to yourself, “If only they knew!”
Well, what are you waiting for? Why not let others know
the importance of your physical education program? In fact
if you want others to support your program and appreciate
your teaching it’s vital to make time to become a PE
promoter. But here's the key: you need to do it in the context
of how you fit into what others are trying to do, whether
they be kids, staff, parents, or school board members.
Too often, physical education is viewed as simply a scheduled
break in a classroom teacher's day. Of course this is not
the case everywhere. Thankfully there are people who understand
the importance of PE and respect its place in the school’s
curriculum. If you are already a part of one such building
or district, congratulations! Your hard work promoting your
program has been successful. Keep up the good work! Hopefully,
this article will give you more ideas you can use to continue
your PE promotion efforts.
For those of you not as fortunate to have reached this point
yet, read on. Based on my elementary PE teaching experience,
I’m going to try my best to give you some tips in promoting
what you do on a daily basis to help you to gain the respect
that you so richly deserve. And in my view, it all starts
at the ground level, with our students and the relationships
we develop with them.
PE teachers need to be clear as to how physical education
fit into the district’s master plan. We often say that
we want to educate students to the best of their abilities
but what exactly does this mean? What are we preparing our
students for? What skills do we want our students to leave
with and how do we expect them to apply those skills?
Often we already know the answers but just haven’t
recognized it. We know that our lessons and scaffolded curriculums
are designed to make our students physically stronger, aerobically
fitter, and more flexible. We teach to help our students to
enjoy movement. We use a variety of physical activities to
make them better movers. And we know the positive connection
between fitness to academic achievement. We know that as our
students become fitter their brains work more efficiently
and effectively.
We all know these things and most of us teach them to our
students. All of this is a given. But the real question is,
do our students actually understand and internalize what they
are learning from PE? Can they apply physical education experiences
to their own lives? Are we prepared to give them a solid answer
(show them relevance) when they ask, “Why do I have
to do this?” or “I don’t like football,
why do I need to know what a post pattern is?” PE teachers
need to resist the temptation to say, “Because I said
so,” or “Because it’s in the curriculum.”
Our students deserve better answers than these.
Connect PE to Things Important to Students
We need answers that relate directly to each of our students.
We all know that we have some kids that just love to be active.
Connecting what we do is easy for them. They enjoy movement
for movement’s sake. But we also have kids that will
question most everything we cover. It’s easy to get
frustrated by the constant barrage of questioning. “I
don’t like this,” “why do we need to do
this?” This list can go on and on. As annoying and frustrating
as these can certainly be, the best way to deal with them
is to have an appropriate answer to them that relates directly
to the student. It’s up to us to make these connections
for our kids, before we can expect them to make the connections
for themselves.
We need to help them understand that being physically active
has benefits beyond the gym or playing fields. PE helps their
body to function better. Students can understand that bodies
are like cars or bicycles. If we let them get run down they
may still work but often not as well as we would like or need
in order to do the things we want to do. The challenge arises
when you try to get students to take this seriously. They
are young and invincible. Taking care of themselves is not
really important to them just yet. That’s why we need
to put what we have for them into a context they can grab
onto.
If they like playing outside with their friends, they now
understand how being aerobic in physical education helps them
when the weekend comes. It helps them to keep playing without
getting tired and having to stop. Now, every time they stop
to tell you that they are “so tired,” or “so
sweaty,” you can respond by enthusiastically saying
GOOD FOR YOU!! Get that message across that getting sweaty
is a good thing. It’s not gross. Help them to understand
that getting tired with you today will make them a bit stronger
tomorrow. Ask them if any of them want to get stronger. When
all of their hands go up, tell them “Good, you’re
all in the right place!”
Connect With Students Through Concepts
The practicing that students do with you when learning to
throw a ball correctly can apply (transfer) to so many other
things that they like to do. They may not like football. That’s
fine. They don’t have to be in love with everything
you teach. As teachers we want them to eventually find something
that they like to do on their own. Perhaps soccer is more
appealing to them? If so, we just need to show them the connection
between football and soccer skills. For example, consider
the follow through. For students to get a football to go where
they want it to go, they need to learn to follow through correctly
toward their target. Once students understand this concept,
they can apply it to kicking a soccer ball or striking pretty
much any object. A follow through is a follow through, whether
it is with their hand or their foot. The context may change,
but the concept is the same.
What if students don’t like floor hockey but love
basketball. “Control” can now be your connection
between the two activities. Control with a hockey stick and
puck is keeping the puck always within two steps of you, all
while keeping your head up and looking where you are going.
That concept can easily be applied to a basketball. Once they
understand the concept, they can see that control for a basketball
is bouncing it keeping it close in front of them, looking
up to see where they are going. The same concept can also
be applied to control with a soccer ball.
Connect to Students’ Daily Lives
All of the character education you do each day has meaning
to your students’ lives as well. Instead of simply encouraging
students to following classroom rules to show that they have
good sportsmanship you can take it a step farther. There are
many ways you can connect what happens in your classroom with
their daily lives. For example, you can point out that helping
someone up accidently knocked over in a PE activity, or giving
some friendly help on a skill is a behavior worth doing outside
of the classroom.
It’s vital to put these important life lessons it in
a context students can relate to. How about inviting a friend
to their house to play. Ask them, would they want to play
with someone that helps them up if they fall or get hurt?
Or would their Mom be happy if they invited a friend over
to play that always wanted to be first and didn’t take
turns? We know the “right” answers and your kids
do too. But now, your emphasis in your PE class has a direct
carryover to their lives at home. Yes, they want a friend
who would help them and yes, they would want others to see
them in this way so they get invited to someone else’s
house to play. You’ll be pleasantly surprised and impressed
how your kids take to this and internalize it.
Connect Physical Fitness and Brain Fitness
All that you already do and teach about fitness and its
relationship to wellness, health, and learning goes right
here! Physical educators have a tremendous amount to give
to their students, their families and to the community in
general. Your entire PE program should embrace current research
that suggests the better one's fitness level is, the better
one's test scores will be.
According to brain researchers, once someone reaches a moderate
level of sustained physical activity (within a target heart
rate range), neurogenesis takes place.
In other words, brain cells actually multiply, and the synapses
between those cells both increase in number and efficiency.
Sounds like a pretty good deal for all educators, not just
us! While exercise is not a "magic pill" that will
automatically make you smarter, exercise does appear to ready
one's brain to assimilate information easier. Show people
that your classes are designed to reach this targeted aerobic
threshold. Again, you are not just holding your program to
the district's standards and expectations; you are basing
what you do on current research findings. A pretty good selling
point, I would think.
Making this body-brain connection is an opportunity to show
your students how you are readying their brains for the rest
of the school day. You can make the connection between a morning
physical education class and the chance to function at a higher
level in academic classes later that morning. Physical education
can now be viewed as "Miracle-Gro for the brain!"
If you are not already familiar with the source, I found
this information about the brain and physical activity and
the quote about "Miracle-Gro" in the book, SPARK,
The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, by
Dr. John J. Ratey. Without sharing the book’s entire
contents to you, it dramatically covers exercise's effects
on learning, stress, anxiety, depression, attention deficit
and other areas. It begins by describing a physical education
program in Naperville Illinois and how the teachers there
were able to expand the acceptance and importance of their
program by making the connection between exercise and learning.
SPARK is a must read for any physical educator.
Beyond that, just stressing what increased fitness does
for brains and bodies can help students make this connection.
It is no longer getting stronger for strength’s sake
or getting more endurance just to be able to run longer. Instead
it means more endurance that enables students to focus longer
in a classroom without starting to doze off. Also, the increased
circulation of oxygenated blood to their brain helps them
learn more effectively. Students can understand this makes
it is easier for them to learn their spelling words or math
facts! Again, it’s something that students can really
grab onto.
In summary, making connections between the movement focused
activities we teach our students and other important aspects
in their lives is an effective way to promote physical education
and helps students, parents, teachers and school administrators
and to appreciate the value of our programs and our teaching.
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