My PE world?

     Fresh off of spring break, I dove head first into a new world!  This past Monday, I did my first paid in-service for another school district.  I have presented ipads in PE to my fellow PE teachers, as well as through KAHPERD. I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous.  I say a "little", not to be cocky, but I just love the stuff I get to share.  I also happen to love to share! :)  It was awesome.  I loved it.  As part of my intro., I talked about how I got to this point in my career.  I'm guessing that a majority of the people who read my blog already know this, so if you do, skip the next paragraph!
   Rewind my book of life about 7 1/2 years and you would find me in the career I initially went to college for.  I was serving as the Sports Director for my local parks and recreation department.  I had just entered my 5th year in this job.  It was a job I loved.  After all, I got my degree in Recreation management.  I was an intern for the sports director before me, and viewed the job as my dream job.  I was decent at what I did, but man did I work a lot.  ALOT!  In addition to working a lot, I was stressed.  ALOT! My oldest son was 4 1/2 years old.  My husband and I wanted a sibling for him.  We wanted one badly.  In the three years leading up to this point, we experienced two miscarriages, my father was diagnosed with cancer and died four months later, and my hometown (where my mom, brother and family all lived) was wiped off the map as a result of a F5 tornado.  Stressed, oh you cannot imagine.  While setting at my desk one day, I got a phone call.  On the other end of the line was an administrator asking if I had ever considered teaching PE.  Fast forward a few weeks, and BAM, I was getting ready for the first day of school, as a PE teacher.  As a child, my father told me multiple times, that I should be a teacher.  I ignored him for 27 years.
   I happen to be blessed with an great co-teacher who got me through the first year or two.  She moved on, but I was able to build my foundation from the lessons I learned, right along with the students. 
    Monday, March 23rd, 2015 was my first (I hoping there is more) "job" as a Physical Education consultant.  I guess that's what you call it?  That sounds a little "professional."  I spent my morning with middle/high school PE teachers, and my afternoon with Elementary PE teachers.  This was a very large school district....30 elementary schools?!  Wow! Their PE coordinator had came to my ipad in PE presentation at KAHPERD in October, and asked if I would come do an in-service for them.  As I drove home (I road home, my awesome husband drove me home) I reflected on the day.  I realized not only do I LOVE teaching kids to be healthy (I do LOVE those little's), I also love to share with adults.  Am I the best?  Absolutly not.  There are MANY amazing Physical Education teachers in the world (Have you looked on Twitter....holy moly, they are the BEST)! I am surrounded by several AMAZING physical education teachers right here in my district!   I feel like a pretty lucky
girl.  Doors are opening, that I didn't even know existed. 

Lesson from this blog?  Listen to your parents.  My dad knew exactly what I should do "when I grew up." 

Get connected.  There are so many #physed T's out there who are more than willing to network, share, and help. 

If you want to check out some of these awesome PE teachers (+ me) stuff, check out this link
 http://www.superstarsofpe.com/

 

 

 

Have a great week!

AB 

Speed and Agility!

     Last time I wrote (it's been awhile) about visiting the countries that are students are from.  Well, we reached our first destination yesterday!  Mexico! The kids were so excited.  Even staff members were excited.  I used Google earth on my ipad to show the kids (with the projector) how far we had traveled.  They were amazed.  On Monday, we are going to play an traditional Mexican physical education game, and hopefully sometime soon we are going to SKYPE with a physical education class in Mexico! Exciting stuff.



     This week we worked on Speed and Agility.  We have fitness tests coming up after spring break, and I thought this would be a great lead in.  With the help of @CapnPetesPE,  (he is a good follow on TWITTER, and has awesome resources in Teachers Pay Teachers) the kids learned a TON.  Of course they moved a TON as well.  We started the mini-unit by having talking about the definitions of speed and agility.  We also talked about how they apply to our health and well being.  Then the kids tried out two of Capn-Petes awesome drills.  Both drills involved speed and agility.  The kids were moving and had a blast.  These drills were fantastic. 

 

 

 

 

 

        I did the drills with all grades.  I was a little concerned that it would be a little difficult for my Kinder's, but they did awesome!  I decided on the second day, we would have the students time the drills.  I used ipads (stopwatches  would work too).   I asked the teachers (2nd-5th) to send four ipads down with their class.  We divided the kids into "teams."  I instructed them to time everybody on their team one time, then the next person in line would time everyone.  By the end of class, there were 4 or 5 times recorded for each student.  There were two separate drills, so we did this over two days of PE. With the help of my co-teacher, I came up with an additional assignment to further their thinking of speed and agility.  The next day, I asked all students to bring their ipads.  I came up with three questions, that required the students to "reflect" on the drills.  Example: Which was your favorite drill? Why?  I created the assignment in Google drive, then sent it to SHOWBIE to assignment folder I had created.  Instead of received 200 emails from students, it put their answers in a folder on SHOWBIE!  After this lesson, I felt like my students may have learned more than they had in any other unit.  But we are not done!  We are going to do two more days of speed/agility activity, then take a short quiz using SOCRATIVE. 

 

           Below is a picture of my new projector!  I am so excited to not have to push a cart out to the middle of the court, and beg the students to go around the 10 yards of extension cord I have out.  This eliminates all of that.  In addition, the quality of the picture is so good, I can even leave all of my lights on! 

 

 

   Get connected.  It changed me as a teacher.  Sounds crazy, but I promise IT'S THE TRUTH!

 

 

AB