Promoting Your Physical
Education Program by: Tom Winiecki, Mott
Road Elementary School, Fayetteville, NY
This article is the first part of a two part
series. The second segment will be published in the
next issue of PELinks4U.
Do you ever feel that as a PE
teacher you are the "best kept secret" around? You know that
what you do and what you can offer children is vital. It's
hard to believe that others don't really know or understand
what you are really all about. If only they would
listen!
Well guess what? Why wait? Why not take it upon yourself to
explain to others the importance of what you do? But here's
the key: To be effective you have to do it in the context of
how you fit into what they are trying to do, whether
they be kids, staff or parents.
To those who don't know any better, you are just a
scheduled break in a classroom teacher's day. Now let me
preface this by saying that certainly this is not the case
everywhere. There are schools, administrators, and teachers
out there who understand the importance of our subject matter
and respect its place in the school as a whole. If you are a
part of one such building or district, congratulations! Your
hard work spent promoting your program has been successful.
Keep up the good work! Today, I'm hoping I can offer you a few
more insights into how you can continue to promote your
program. For those not as are successful, read on. I'm going
to try my best to share some tips for promoting what you do on
a daily basis in an effort to gain the respect that you so
richly deserve. And in my opinion, it all starts at the
ground level, our students!
What knowledge and skills do you want your students to
leave with as a result of your program and how will you
measure success? Are your lessons and scaffolded-curriculums
designed to make your students physically stronger, more
aerobic, more flexible? Is your teaching intended to help
your students enjoy movement and to get better at it? Do
you want your students to understand the connection between
fitness and academic achievement? Are you
convinced that as students become fitter, their brains work
more efficiently and effectively?
All of the above are almost certainly part of your
thinking, but a key question to ask yourself is whether as a
result of what you're doing your students actually understand
and internalize your intent? Can they see how it relates
to their lives? In other words, do we have a solid answer for
them 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?"
Connect to Things Important to Them
We must resist the temptation to say, "Because I said so,
"or" Because it's in the curriculum." We need better
answers than these. 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.
We also all have kids that 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 questions can certainly be,
the best way to deal with them is to have an appropriate
answer to them that relates directly to the students own
experiences. As teachers, it's up to us to make these
connections for our kids, before expecting them to make them
for themselves.
For example, we need to tell students that being physically
active has benefits beyond the gym, or field. Their body
will work better. Not unlike a car, if you let it get
run down, it will still work, but not as well as you would
like or need. It's the same with their body. The trick
comes when you try to get them to take this
seriously. They are still young and invincible at least
in their own minds. Taking care of themselves is not
really important to them. They don't yet see a need. So
it's important that we put what we have for them into a
context they can grab onto.
Students who like playing outside with their friends, can
understand how being aerobic in your class helps them when the
weekend comes and they want 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
the message across that getting sweaty is a good thing. It's
not gross. Help them understand that getting tired with
you today will make them 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!"
Make Connections Through Concepts
Practice students do with you such as learning to throw a
ball correctly can apply 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. You just want them to eventually find something
that they like to do on their own. Soccer may be their
"favorite" activity. Okay, now we just need to
show them how using a football can connect to something else,
say soccer. Using "follow-through" for example.
For them to make a football go where they want it to go, they
need to learn to follow through correctly toward their
target. Once they understand that concept, they can
apply it to kicking a soccer ball. 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 they don't like floor hockey, but they love
basketball. Control can easily be your connection
between the two activities. Control with a hockey stick
and puck is keeping the puck always within two steps of you,
while keeping your head up, and looking where you are
going. That concept can easily be applied to
basketball. Now they still know that control, this time
with a basketball is bouncing it while keeping it within two
steps of them, looking up to see where they are
going. The same idea can also be applied to control with
a soccer ball.
All of the character education you do each day has meaning
to your students' lives as well. Instead of simply following
the rules in class to show that you have good sportsmanship
take it a step farther. Connect for them that seeing someone
else help somebody up that they accidently knocked over, or
giving some friendly help on a skill is something they should
also want to do.
The key is to put your instruction in a context students
can relate to. How about inviting a friend over to their house
to play. Ask them, "Would they want to play with someone
that helps them up if they fall?" Or would their mom be
happy if they invited a friend over to play that always wanted
to be first? We know these answers and kids do to. But now,
your emphasis in your class has a direct carryover to
students' 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.
Fitness and the Brain
All that you already do and teach about fitness and its
relationship to wellness, health, and learning can also go
right here. We have a tremendous amount to give to our
students, their families, and to the community in general.
Envision your entire program embracing current research that
tells us that the better one's fitness level is the better
one's test scores will be. You can also apply the current
neurological research that says that once someone reaches a
moderate level of sustained physical activity (within a target
heart rate range), neurogenesis actually takes place. Brain
cells actually multiply and the synapses between those cells
actually 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, science suggests that it will ready one's brain
to assimilate information easier. Show people that your
classes are designed to reach this 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!
Envision this as an opportunity to show how you are
readying your students' brain for the rest of the school day.
Make the connection between a morning physical education class
and the chance to function at a higher level in the classroom
later that morning. As John Ratey tells us in his book Spark, The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise
and the Brain, physical education can be viewed as
"Miracle-Gro for the brain!" Incidentally, if you haven't read
this book it dramatically covers exercise's effects on
learning, stress, anxiety, depression, attention deficit, and
other areas. It begins by describing the physical education
program in Naperville, Illinois that many of you may already
be familiar with, and how they were able to expand the
acceptance and importance of their PE program by making the
connection between exercise and learning. It's a must read for
all physical educators.
Emphasizing what increased fitness does for student bodies
helps make connections. It is no longer just getting stronger
for strength's sake, or getting more endurance just to be able
to run longer. Now students understand that more endurance
will enable them to focus longer in the classroom without
starting to doze off. Or how the increased circulation of
oxygenated blood to their brain lets them learn more
effectively. Learning their spelling words, or math facts will
come easier. Again it's something that they can really
appreciate.
(Part II of this article will appear in the January edition
of pelinks4u)
Biography: For 32 years, Tom Winiecki has taught elementary
physical education at Mott Road Elementary School in
Fayetteville, NY and is the district's K-12 PE coordinator. He
has been National Board Certified since 2005 and recently
achieved recertification from the National Board of
Professional Teaching Standards through 2025. Tom has been a
regular contributor to pelinks4u for more than a
decade. Tom has been recognized through numerous awards
including Elementary Teacher of the Year by the NY AAHPERD,
and most recently as the 2013 NFL Network's Physical Education
Teacher of the Year.
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