Writing

I can count on one hand the times I had to write in my PE classes.  Actually, I don't even need one hand because I don't ever remember writing in PE.  

America is obese! My job as a PE teacher is to get kids moving and hopefully help them develop a lifetime of fitness. Sometimes the only exercise students get is from PE.  My methods teacher told us that most PE teachers talk to much and don't give students enough time to play. However, everyone is saying that I need to have my students write. I could have my students write journals, but as a student I hate journals. And as a teacher I'm sure I would hate having to grade all of them.  I could have them write a workout plan, but how much time should I take to teach them how to do it? If I had a class that was a little more specific like fit for life or weights, I would definitely have them write a paper.


 So here's the dilemma.....Do I take time out of my class to have my students write? Or should I just let my students get the exercise they need? 

Connections

My discipline is PE.  Growing up with 3 older brothers sports were a huge thing in our house! My brothers watched three things on TV, sports, WWF/WWE, and Dukes of Hazzard. Being much smaller then them, I never could wrestle the remote away and I just ended up watching their shows.

(And I'm not going to lie, it was a sad day in my household when I found out that Macho Man Randy Savage had passed away!)
















Since I ended up watching sports with my brothers, I was pretty excited when the opportunity finally came to actually play them.  In my community they try to start kids young, so when I was 3 I started clogging. By age 5 I was doing ballet and softball. At Age 6 I added soccer, gymnastics and basketball to the mix.  By 5th grade I had narrowed down the sports to dance, gymnastics, basketball and volleyball. I loved playing sports so I always loved my PE classes. However, in high school we only played 3 sports, volleyball, basketball, and softball.

I loved playing sports and thought I had played them all.

Oh how wrong I was!!

When I got to college we played ultimate frisbee, racquetball, tennis, cricket, floor hockey, rugby and more. Why didn't I know about these sports before?! I know we didn't have all the facilities to accommodate these sports, like racquetball, or tennis, but why hadn't my teacher taught us ultimate frisbee?

As a teacher I want to bring these different sports to my students. I don't want them to be as naive as I was. Our goal as PE teachers is to try to get students to be active and develop a goal of lifetime fitness. Hopefully by showing students a variety of different sports and how fun they are, they will continue to be active their whole lives.