The beginning of something great!

The impossible wave

This is a video of my hero, Laird Hamilton. Laird is said to be the best big wave surfer that has ever lived. What makes me so drawn to him is the way he looks at life. Laird Hamilton is the most dedicated and devoted person I have ever seen. Whatever Laird wants to do, he puts all of the effort he possibly could into it until he reaches his goal. Having this much dedication will get you anywhere you want and it is exactly how I would like to be when applied to my teaching.If I could learn to put that much effort into everything I do, and devote myself to everything that I am really striving for, I could become a positive role model for my students, hopefully pushing them to do the same. I am a strong believer that having goals is extremely important. No matter how big or small those goals are, it is necessary to have them. Having goals gives you something to work for, something to achieve, and something to reward you when you get there. The satisfaction that comes with achieving a goal is unbeatable and I believe all people should experience it at some point in their life. Physical education especially is a field that most definitely requires goals. Whether the goal is as small as improving your mile time by 15 seconds, or as big as being able to run a marathon, the goal is still important. As my quote says on the top of my blog, "goals are the fuel to the furnace of achievement"

2009 SUNY Cortland Mini Conference

The 2009 Mini Conference has arrived and it went great! This years keynote speaker was Dr. Judy Rink, a SUNY Cortland alumni and well known researcher in the physical education field. She has done great work in physical education and has come up with some fantastic philosophies and ideas on how physical education should be taught and what direction it should be going. A great point that Judy made was about accountability and how we, as the future generation of physical education, are responsible for taking it to the next step, and helping people realize the true importance of it. Judy Rink is truly an inspiration and I hope to someday be as much of an influence as she has become on all physical education teachers. Another presentation that was held was by our very own physical education majors here at SUNY Cortland. Together they presented different types of warm up activities that can be used in a physical education class. Of coarse I volunteered to participate and help them out with these activities and I must say, they did their job. By the end of the presentation I was hot and sweaty and out of breathe. Overall, I really learned a lot from this conference, experiencing different ideas and philosophies about physical education. I will be taking a lot of this information along with me on my physical education journey to become the best physical education teacher I possibly could.

Lab B - Listen in

Continuing my teaching development, and after learning more tricks of the trade I was up again to teach the class a new skill. In this lesson I was to teach the class the back hand pass with a Frisbee. I definitely felt more confident with this assignment and knew right away that my lesson would be much more fluent and smooth. In this lab we were attached to an mp3 recorder and a microphone that allows us to play back our lesson and hear exactly what we said and how we said it.

While listening to my audio recording I was really able to assess my speech and style of teaching. I was able to see what words I kept repeating, which sentences did not make sense, and various instructions I could have avoided to get the students into more activity quicker. While teaching, it is hard to really listen to yourself mostly because of nerves and being a little too anxious. Speaking of being anxious, I did realize that my speech speed has slowed down much more, and I now teach at a normal pace. One thing I noticed I did a lot in the earlier teaching experiences is speed teach. This is when I rush through what I'm saying without knowing because I am so nervous to be in front of a group of people. However, this semester specifically, I have really improved on my shyness and have become significantly more comfortable in front of a large crowd.

Another aspect of my teaching that still needs work is my time managemnet. Thanks to my time coding assessment I am able to see exactly how much time I spent on different areas of teaching such as management, activity, instruction, and waiting time. Although my time code sheet does show good numbers, I could still improve upon them. I do very well with avoiding any waiting time and I'm always working on something with my students. I do just enough activity time, but could still use more since this is "physical" education. My best bet would be to replace some of my instruction time with more activity. I need to work on making my introductions and directions short and to the point so that I can provide the maximum amount of activity possible.

Another problem that I have when I teach that is just a bad habit is my language. No, I do not mean I curse and say bad words when I teach, I mean that I say some words too many times, or I say the wrong word in certain situations. While going over my verbal transcript for this lab I noticed that I will say "alright" at the start of almost every sentence. Of coarse, I can still be a great teacher even though I use that word many many.....many times, however, it would be much more professional and sounds more professional if I could cut out repetitive words like that. Another mistake I seem to make a lot is when I use the word "guys" to refer to the class. Today, many people refer to boys and girls as a group as guys, and no one really seems to mind that much. However, when being as professional as possible it would be more than expected to say the more politically correct term when referring to a group of people. This is probably my worst habit and will be the hardest to break. I need to work on putting words like "everyone" or "class" into my vocabulary during my teaching journey.