WHO CAN DO WHAT YOU DO?

After 4 years of education at Springfield College, The Birthplace of Basketball, I entered into my first year of teaching physical education at the Florence E. Smith School in West Hartford, CT.  At that time, the primary grades had a curriculum built around games, story plays and mimetics.  Hazel Richardson Game Cards had directions for hundreds of kid's games from Run Rabbit Run, Squirrels in Trees, Duck, Duck Goose, Crows and Cranes, Dog Catcher, ad infinitum.  The classroom teacher had to observe the lesson and do a follow up lesson during the week.  The next time her class had gym, she showed me what she had done with the children during the week, and often it was better done than when I did it. Having her children all day, every day, gave her a rapport with them that was impossible for me to simulate in one half hour per week.  I also noticed that when the children gathered after school for their Brownie or Cub Scout meeting, the troop leader often played games with them as part of their meeting.  A favorite was "Steal The Bacon".  Here too, I noticed that the troop leaders ran the games as well as I did, and they did not have a four year degree in physical education. Over time, this bothered me as I did not feel "special" and felt that I really didn't need a four year degree to teach games, even though in college I had Games I, II, and III.  I was ready to move on to the high school and coaching where I would have more status.

About that time, movement education and educational gymnastics arrived on the scene and rescued me. I attended numerous workshops and conferences centered around movement education, and we purchase Whittle Apparatus from England and got heavily involved in Educational Gymnastics.  I had a library of British books on physical education where the focus was not on games, but on teaching children to manage their body and apply those skills to being able to more easily perform athletic activities.  For example, engaging in activities to improve your sense of balance, will enable you to learn to engage in activities such as skiing or skate boarding more easily and safely.  I invested myself in this approach to teaching and realized now that I had a content knowledge that the classroom teacher and troop leaders did not have, and thus could contribute to the "physical education" (with the second word being more important than the first) of my students in meaningful ways.  Apparatus activities dominated much of the program and over time, the students became functionally fit and more athletic than they would have been without this approach to teaching.  In subsequent years, physical education was scheduled twice a week and the classroom teacher no longer had to observe the class and do a follow up lesson.

So what is the intent of this blog?  It is for you to look at your primary school program, and ask yourself the question, "Do you need to be a physical education teacher with a four year college degree, to do what you do with your students?" If you find that you are basically organizing recreational activities and games, playing on the scooters or with the parachute, or refereeing the soccer or basketball games, I would challenge you to make a list of every lesson  you did in a week and ask yourself this question.  "Does someone need a four year degree in physical education to do what I did this week?"  Are you an organizer of "activities" or a teacher of "lessons" that enhance your students physical development?  What is your role as a physical education teacher? Does it go beyond organizing activities?  Food for thought.