The Accidental
Physical Education Teacher
Welcome to
paradox, class.
I had the
authority of a teacher, including making lesson plans, handing out assignments,
grading papers and planning physical education units. I had the transience of a
substitute, knowing that it wasn’t really my class and that any day the
principal could tell me that he’d found a new teacher.
And I had
additional issues—I was taking over mid-year and didn’t have the advantage of
advanced planning or even proper educational training. I, with the direction of
the principal was making some curriculum changes that were not uniformly
popular—like yoga on Wednesdays and T25 on Fridays. I got student’s names wrong
for weeks. And there were a few students who challenged me by acting out in
class, or by simply talking to each other and refusing to do any work. No
amount of demerits seemed to have any impact on behavior either.
To tell you the
truth, I felt overwhelmed and more than once began drafting my resignation email
to the principal. But I didn’t because
as much as some days I felt completely over my head, I knew having some sort of
stability was better for these students. Also, I needed a challenge in my life.
This was a challenge. Was I really going to quit after a week or two?
And I realized
that I needed to change my focus from all the reasons why I was not qualified
to be a P.E. teacher to what skills and experience I did have that I could draw
upon (Thank you Cub Scout Summer Day Camp). At the same time, by changing my attitude I could focus on what I could learn from this experience. That made all the difference. The 6:00 am dread went away.
I took this new found focus and applied it to the very first assignment/project I wrote. It was a nutrition and fitness project. Each student was to fill out a spreadsheet I made and labeled the 'Raptor Tracker.' In it they were to record everything they ate and all their exercise activities for a week.
This assignment was met with predicted groans. They had done a similar
assignment with the previous teacher—but only recorded one day and not in much
detail. My assignment required recording calories, grams protein, grams carbs,
and grams fat. The idea was to learn what you eat. It is impossible to change
your habits if you don’t know what those habits are or have enough data to
figure out if you have bad eating or exercise habits that you want to change.
Bonus for me: I
got to do it too. I learned a lot about my own eating habits and where I needed to make some changes.
I got to do yoga and cardio workouts. I got to study
about how illicit drugs and alcohol abuse effects brain chemistry and can lead to addiction. And I
got to teach basketball on our parking lot court—ending the basketball unit
with an inter-class tournament I dubbed, ‘Raptor Madness.’ You can watch the game between period five and the teachers if you follow the link that follows:
Raptor Madness
Raptor Madness
But the best
part—as I came to know these students I learned to love them.
On my last day,
after I passed out some candy and before giving them free time outside, I made
my farewell speech. Here’s what I said, in a nutshell:
Change is hard,
even in the best of times. You’ve had to go thru two teacher changes in the course
of this year and had to make adjustments to each new teacher. That can be frustrating, but that it can also
be a learning experience.
Learning is
their job. No one can make them learn. But more importantly, no one can stop
them from learning. If they hate the new teacher, or if they didn’t like my teaching
style, they could still learn. They were their own best teacher. If they embraced
this principle they would become life-long learners.
Lastly, I had
learned a great deal from being their permanent sub and was grateful for the opportunity
to be there with them.
Looking back, I
am grateful I accepted this job—as tough as it was at times. And though I joke
that I would never do it again, I probably would.
.
