When It Becomes Sensory
In my athlete days, which ended about 15 years ago, the goal was to NOT feel and just complete the tasks put to paper. It was something I was given or sought out — “more” was agreed upon by all… Read more ›
Category Archives: physical education
When You Don’t Like to Practice
The PE class I created was carefully called Games & Practice. The goal is to develop skills and then utilize those skills in a larger, faster context. Sometimes this means adding people, sometimes this means creating a more complex task,… Read more ›
How to Cultivate Autonomy (Part 1)
Whether you know what to do or don’t know what to do, these behaviors have been learned (and taught). The environment one finds themselves in caters to these patterns, and is socially accepted (and encouraged). Our habits define who we… Read more ›
Reflections (2024)
I usually write these up at the school year’s end. But with nine weeks left in the semester, it seems pertinent to bring to light some things I have realized and have been chewing on for some time. (If you… Read more ›
How Much is Enough?
At the very beginning of the pandemic, I posted and article that asked, “How does one know what to do?” In it, I used the example of Kevin McCallister (via Home Alone) mimicking ‘adulting’ after his initial indulgence into… Read more ›
Kids & Able-Bodied
There is an assumption that young people are able-bodied. It is the gift of youth, the privilege of being newer to this world designed to break you down. It has become incredibly apparent, though, particularly in this last semester, that… Read more ›
Every Day Begins with Laundry
Habits and attitudes. At its core, this is what teaching comes down to. Do you know how to break them? Do you know how to build them? How do you feel about the things you do every day? Are they… Read more ›
Architecture of a Body-Centric PE Lesson (Part 2)
To recap Part One: Create a sense of intrigue Provide multiple points of entry Establish pockets of safety Ask instead of assume This sh*t’s hard (which is why so few do it) After the weight shift lesson , three of… Read more ›
Architecture of a Body-Centric PE Lesson (Part 1)
When planning a lesson that is skills based, you must account for multiple points of entry. In public education, everybody and every body must be able to find some success. You also must be able to do what you are… Read more ›
A Perceived Philosophical Conflict
I am the only female in my high school PE department. It’s been this way for 20 years. The one time another female came in she tried to out-alpha the football coach and got removed from teaching PE and placed… Read more ›
The Conundrum of Community
To belong implies a selection was made. There was a choice and options. In my rugby years, making the Select Side was a sign of being elite. You were one of the best in your region. You were chosen from… Read more ›
Students & the System
Amongst other things, COVID-19 revealed how fragile the American educational system is, and how unadaptable it is to changing and evolving times. Designed to churn out compliant workers, it conflicts with the world around them — a burgeoning economy of… Read more ›
Relationships, Part 3: Students
Part Three in a four-part series of relational examinations. Part One: Parents Part Two: Pets I never had any aspirations to be a teacher. I’d planned on becoming a physical therapist, but when it became clear that the training… Read more ›
Caring for Space
It has become wildly apparent that neglect leads to destruction. The planet, the houseless, bodies, trauma, young people. ( I could add the elderly or just ‘people’ there as well, but older people tend to have and want to keep,… Read more ›
Entering Worlds
Each of us resides in our own world. It may be one we created, one we filtered out from experience, or one that revolves around our investments in habit and attention. Once established and found comfortable, it becomes a prism… Read more ›
PE as the Incubator of Risk
Physical Education classes have gotten bigger over the course of the pandemic. The powers that be have knowingly placed too many kids within too small an area. Like athletics, it seems to have a separate set of rules that allow… Read more ›
What is a Class?
This is a question that requires more probing questions. Must there be a unifying variable of sameness? If so, what is it? The age of the people? The thematic subject? What actions are expected? How about the time of day? … Read more ›
It’s Not Working
Feature photo caption: “A picture of my brother in PE class today.” I wonder how many people within the work can admit it isn’t working. Kids can say it. Parents can say it. Academics who perhaps used to teach… Read more ›
Meaning, Behavior, & the Social Element
This piece serves as a follow up to “The Problem with Meaningful Phys Ed“. Amidst a pandemic, the question that kept driving what we did and how we did it was, “What matters?” Weirdly, and almost embarrassingly, this did… Read more ›
The Problem with ‘Meaningful Phys Ed’
As I start to look outward in my professional career, I keep running into this study about Meaningful Experiences in Physical Education and Youth Sport. In it, “five themes were identified as central influences to young people’s meaningful experiences in… Read more ›
Switching Contexts
The last several weeks of Quarter One had assignments based on defining care, creating change, and challenging accepted truths. If our beliefs shape behavior, then either place can act as a starting point to disturb or disrupt the other. Conversations… Read more ›
Bringing Feeling Into Physical Education: A Presentation
From October 17th, 2020, a month into the school year and six months into the COVID pandemic. SLIDESHOW PDF
The Social Element & Play
This is the third in a series of real-time, as it happens articles about leading online Physical Education. [Part one can be found here. Part Two can be found here.] We ended the last segment with a knowing need… Read more ›
Pause & Keep Listening
Some quick context about the current teaching/ learning parameters of Distance Learning for the district I work for. 1. Block classes meet four times per week. There are four total classes per day, and teachers teach three of these sections… Read more ›
A Chance for Change
Typically, when I write, I try to give an overview of a completed loop of learning: this is where I started, this is where I went, and this is what I found. As a public educator in the midst the… Read more ›
How I Accidentally Got Invited to the Embodiment Summit
I received an email from Daniela Welzel, whom I do not know. It was obviously of the bulk variety, not even a name in the greeting, and it touted its magnitude and asked if I was interested. I didn’t know… Read more ›
The Brilliance Behind Bal-A-Vis-X
The following video drummed up tons of interest in Bal-A-Vis-X over the past year: It’s how I was made aware of it. I was tagged via facebook, twice. While certainly intriguing and catchy, these edits of action do not… Read more ›
A Philosophy of Possibility
Kids on a playground at recess choose their environment. They enjoy it because there are no expectations — nothing has to be done nor are they confined to a singular place. They can be around people or take space for… Read more ›
Shifting Classes Toward Students
Three years in the making, I became clear on the name for my class and what I hoped it could offer students. Up until this time, I got the same kind of kid – ones who prioritized learning and understanding… Read more ›
Critical Look #3 – My Own Work
‘Critical Look’ challenges the way systemic information is presented and questions the story being told. SYSTEMIC IDEOLOGY: Create a New Normal in Physical Education. Personal background with system – Fifteen years of trial and error at a public high… Read more ›
A Hard-Soft PE
Thematic teaching offers an umbrella students can return to to make their own connections. It provides a constant amidst the chaos to formulate conclusions and test variables against. Stepping back and trying to see the bigger picture of my classes,… Read more ›
Almog Loven Part 2: Feels
Part one of this series looked at the more physical elements of the “Weightlessness” workshop, and revealed the wonderful surprise of walking away with better knees. Part two will attempt to unveil the method behind the artistry of making a… Read more ›
An Interesting Phys Ed
Interest dictates pretty much everything. It is the neck that turns the head and keeps curious eyes fixed. At its most illuminating and significant, it attracts the onlooker into their own inner workings. Believe that you are both interesting and… Read more ›
Teaching Kids Weightlifting
A PE teacher on one side of the country texts her trainer pal on the other. “I was thinking of getting this textbook for my weightlifting class.” “Why do you need a textbook?” “So I have something to reference… Read more ›
An Everything PE: Year Two in Review
Two years ago, I set to develop a “new” type of PE that looked outside the realms of sport and weight lifting. With the outliers as my muse, we set to examine movement with a larger lens — how one… Read more ›
Certs, Workshops, and Continuing Ed
Information is a tease that lures you to attach yourself with a particular paradigm. The consequence of consuming the free tastes is that you are left deficient. Once sampled, you’re not entirely sure what you just had, but you do… Read more ›
Letting Them Lead
Three months into the new school year, everything seems easier. As encouraging as my findings from the first year were, I wanted to further minimize my influence over their minds. To instigate thinking, one must ask provocative questions that the… Read more ›
A New PE: Year in Review
Being a public educator means you will never be without students. The caveat is that many won’t want to be there. Shaped by a past experience of dodgeballs to the face and timed miles and pacer tests, Physical Education was… Read more ›
The World of Fighting Monkey (part 2)
Engaging with your work demands a certain degree of ownership. There must be a benefit to the challenge presented, beyond just a hard-to-apply confidence. A task can serve as a test of will, a test of adaptability, and/or a test… Read more ›
Loving Your Work As If It Were a Person
I live a charmed existence. I get to play with kids and problem solve painful movement with adults. Familiar with the importance of each, I also teach teens about pain and guide adults toward rediscovering play. I step between the… Read more ›
Changing the Culture of Physical Education
I’ve been teaching PE for thirteen years. When I entered, I did what those around me were doing. I had been an athlete. I had great fun and success through sport, and I wanted to share this experience with the… Read more ›
“It’s all made up stuff.”
As practioners and coaches, teachers and students, we are constantly seeking out information to make us better at what we are trying to do. We stalk and search. If only we could see and know, then we could do. Despite… Read more ›
Movement Translation
“Translation allows for otherwise separate entities to synapse and communicate.” I have been a teacher for thirteen years and a movement therapist for five. As I toggle through the two professions, an unlikely blend has taken place. I find… Read more ›
Minimizing Sport in Physical Education
featured photo credit: theindianschool.in I’ve had the good fortune to work at an arts school the last eight years. The students, many disenfranchised with Physical Education in the past, were open and willing to trying different things. I’m not… Read more ›
The Influence of Dirt
The dirt must have confidence. It’s capable of so many things! Even if no one notices and it doesn’t look like it’s working, it gets some pretty amazing stuff done. It holds up the entire world, grows plants, supplies food,… Read more ›
Why Good Teaching Trumps Good Coaching
Both teachers and coaches have luxuries that make the other envious. Coaches wish they had the endless stream of people to work with, a guaranteed influx of new bodies. Teachers wish they had kids that came in seeking help to… Read more ›