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Sunday, May 4, 2014

The Accidental Physical Education Teacher

 
The Accidental Physical Education Teacher

 As I wrote about in my last blog post, I took on the permanent substitute job for all the P.E./Heath classes at my son’s charter school.  I found the term “permanent substitute” confusing.   The kids did too. Nearly every class asked a version of this question, after the principal introduced: How can you be permanent and temporary at the same time?
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 
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.

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