Second Nature

The reason this post was called second nature is because teaching a class is starting to become exactly that. It's not something that I wake up and think "Oh no I have to teach today," it is something that I am excited about. I have grown so much since the beginning of the year and I hope to keep growing. It was a pleasure to be in Dr. Yang's class, with the enthusiasm and excitement he brought with him everyday. I have learned from him that teaching is not about us, it is about the kids that we will be teaching. There are no more knots in my stomach from worrying that I will not be good enough. With the tools that I have learned this year I am confident that I can go and teach any activity or sport in front of any class and make them as pumped about it as I am. It's been a great semester.

Field Trip

As a class we decided to go on a field trip for my lesson to the bowling alley in which I would teach my lesson. It was a great experience for my growth as a teacher. I was given the responsibility of making the reservation and getting the best price possible for my class. This was something that I could very well be faced with in the future, so now I have a good understanding on what to do when planning for a lesson like this. My goal for this lesson was to really let loose and try to give as much feedback as possible to my peers. Dr. Yang threw a few curve balls at me during my lesson which put me on defense at first but then I think I bounced back quite well. A student came up to me and started speaking to me in Espanol. The student was showing me signs of not understanding what I was teaching to the class. I walked her through all of the steps of the cues and she understood what I was trying to do. It was important that students were involved with the activity for a good portion of the class so I put 4 people to a lane and it worked out well. This lesson gave us the oppurtunity to try out some sort of technology. I used the Xavix, which was an interactive video game for bowling. I brought with me a projector to project the picture of the game. This was a station that the students could try out the cues that I was teaching them. Also click here to see my entire packet on history, terminology, and other ideas on bowling.

Teaching through the Physical

This was a whole lesson in which we tried to relate the history of Table Tennis to the lesson. We wanted to give some sort of background on where the game comes from. We also talked about how the sport is an Olympic sport. We went over all the rules and the basic terminology that you needed to know in order to play this prestigious sport. This write up will show an in depth look at table tennis.

The Best Sport In the World!!

As soon as we were told that we could choose a game or sport of our choice but it had to be from a different country than ours, I immediately thought of Table Tennis for my lesson. I have a had a lot experience with Table Tennis so I felt like I was already ahead of the curb. The challenge for us was that we were teaching are lesson down in the racquet ball courts. So I wasn't exactly sure how it would play out. I was worried that we would not have enough room. I had all the equipment I needed, so that was fine. This was also the first lesson plan that I had ever really attempted. I was nervous that I would not have enough tasks. I was wrong about that one. During the lesson I felt everything went rather well. I focused more on the feedback, more importantly what type of feedback I should have been giving. Even though I was giving feedback I still needed to give more back. The hardest thing about this lesson for me was I feel like I had so much more to show. So it's frustrating to know that you have so much knowledge to give in a certain area but you need to show patience when starting out with a new game. During this lesson, I tried to make sure the students kept active throughout.

Running the Shell

As a class we were teaching an Ultimate Frisbee unit. The task that I was given to try to execute to the best of my knowledge was the "shell". The shell was a confusing task to grasp. I knew that teaching this to the class was not going to be an easy task. The one positive outlook I had was that I was not nervous or at least no where as near as nervous as I was in the past. This was good because I could really focus on the task that I was trying to teach. After listening to the MP3 of myself after this teaching experience I realized that I was sounding a lot more confident. My voice was not cracking as much. I started to really believe that I could do this and that it was not something I should be getting nervous over, especially if this is what i want to do for the rest of my life. Something I noticed that I needed work on is how I directed my feedback back to my peers. For example, I said things like "Good job Freddie", which was not really directed to the task I was teaching. This experience is what pulled me in, it was the day where I felt like I found my calling. Overall I had fun doing this!!!

The Day it Began!

So the first day of class we were thrown directly into the Lions den. The funny part about this day was I that I was not dressed in the proper attire. I had a pair of jeans and a T-Shirt on. Dr. Yang came into the classroom and immediately mentioned that we all would be teaching on this day. My mouth had dropped to the floor. Dr. Yang also said that we would be partnered up with someone and we had to figure out what we wanted to teach to the classroom. Before this very day I think that I may have taught once before and it was something that made me incredibly nervous. My partner and I decided to teach the correct way of doing a push-up and a sit-up, I was teaching the push-up. My partner went first and I think that made it worse for me, the anxiety was building to a new level for me. As I was teaching I could feel my voice quivering. Personally I thought that I was terrible and I knew there was a lot of work that needed to be done. I watched the video of my first performance and overall after watching the video, I decided that it was not all that bad. Even though I did not think it was terrible I still knew there was a lot more for me to improve on

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Published on Dec 1, 2008 12:09:48 PM EST

SUNY Cortland Mini-Conference

I was at attendance for the 2008 mini-conference fall sememster, October 10 and enjoyed a few different inside looks on what the new Physical Educator is all about. The keynote speaker John Passarini opened up with a touching in-sight on what Adaptive PE was to him and how he has stayed commited to trying to get his message to everyone who wants to learn. Dr. Passarini gave me a new out look on how there are no disabilities its just people are differently able. Dr. Passarini talked throughout his presentation about a girl Katie Lynch. Katie thought of herself as a great athlete. Its not about what records you have broken or how fast you are at something, it depends on the abilities you were born with and what you choose to do with them. It's about pushing yourself to the next level and climbing to new heights. Thats what Katie did, she persevered and did things no one ever gave her shot to do. Of course a lot of the credit goes to Katie for believing herself but most of the credit goes to John Passarini. Dr. Passarini helped to adapt activities to Katie in order for her to get stronger and to become the person she was.
Another presentation that I attended was the presentation on Polar Technology. The component to this presentation was the usage of technology included within schools PE programs. The idea of using heart rate monitors in a PE class in order to measure a students effort in PE class was something new to me. It was a type of technology that I was not familiar with until this year. We use this same type of technology in our Statistics and Assessments class. It shows some sort of accountability for the students to actually move around in class and remain active. If there are questions from parents on why is there childs grade not where they thought it should be then you have data in which you have on file to show them. It's a huge step in a new way students can and should be graded. Or at least the "effort" component can be factored into the grading system. There was a lot of technology that I saw in which I wish we had more time to learn more on it during the conference because some of it was confusing. It all seemed very beneficial to what were trying to do. My one question is how do we get funded for equipment like this? I know one thing for sure, technology these days can be quite the penny!!!