Volunteering Made Easy

This past semester I have done some serious growing up and maturing. My whole life I have played baseball and have always dreamt of playing at the professional level one day. I have learned that while dreams are great to have, reality is always just around the corner. I have turned my dreams into teaching and coaching the youth of our country and molding minds and bodies into healthy adults. I have instructed in many youth baseball clinics throughout my life however I never had the skills that I learned in 255. In early February I instructed at the SUNY Cortland youth baseball clinic. Though early in the semester, I had already learned many teaching techniques I never previously had in my teaching arsenal. I instructed children and teenagers in the proper techniques in the basic aspect of the game of baseball. I evaluated and gave constructive feedback to the kids and gave them tips and drills they could work on to make themselves better. I also attended two teen nights at the YMCA on Tompkins Street in Cortland. At these teen nights I learned a great deal of technology using the Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution. Over the course of this semester I have done a lot of growing up and used many of the techniques I learned in 255 in my volunteer hours.

Physical Activity and Education

Our country has ran into a huge metaphorical wall called obesity. Everywhere you look there are fast food establishments with dirt cheap prices that take full advantage of our societies fast paced lifestyles. It is hard to drive down a main road without running into some sort of fast food place that has flashy signs and looks so attractive after a long day at the office. The problem we have to face as a society is our inactivity that goes a long with our energy exerting days. Instead of exerting so much energy doing things like working or playing video games people should go for a run or even a walk to burn some of that energy we have left over. When people get home from a long day the last thing they want to do is prepare a nutritious meal or go to a gym or a walk for with the dog. Even our animals are more inactive than in the past. We are so lazy that we don't even exercise our pets. Some things need to change in our society, it has been proven in many scholarly studies that physical activity increases brain activity and academic standings of students. In these articles, http://www.slideshare.net/Moosekj25?type=mypage, this topic is researched and developed into great detail and brings up many valid points and suggestions to a resolution. Physical education teachers play a key role in the end of this obesity epidemic. Physical Educators single handed develop and mold the minds and bodies of the youth in our country. The video game and Internet generation has developed habits of laziness and passiveness in the aspect of physical activity. Educators need to make PE fun and interesting to kids that would rather be home playing other kids in video games of all kinds. Rather than going out in the yard and playing pick up football kids would rather play Madden for hours on end and eat junk food until their stomachs are about to rupture. This task is not easy for Physical educators, which is why the teaching environment and style needs to be attractive and tempting to students. This year I have learned how to incorporate technology into lessons which will greatly help in coaxing the technology generation to become physically active.

Treadmills In The Classroom Eh??!!

CBC News in Canada recently covered an extremely intriguing story on a group of troubled students who were on basically their last limb of the educational tree. Allison Cameron is an eighth grade teacher in a high needs school in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was having trouble motivating her troubled students to do their work or even to come to school. Cameron decided something had to be done to help her students want to learn and be more involved. Ms. Cameron turned to a book written by John Ratey called Spark. This book contains information and studies on how movement and physical activity stimulates the brain and causes a students performance in the classroom to increase considerably. I feel this incredible article should be made more public to the rest of the world. This segment could easily help us Americans solve this obesity epidemic we have going on right now. Physical activity daily will not only make us healthier but exercising before learning would help us retain what we are learning and be more engaged in what is going on in the lesson. The kids in the story all showed vast improvements in behavior and academic standings and truly showed a want and desire to become better students.

D-Lab

This semester was the beginning of my journey into what i thought was a cake walk major. At my previous school the Phys. Ed was very book related and not so hands on. Here at Cortland I have been introduced into a whole new realm of education that i really never even thought it existed. I have come so far from the beginning of the semester until now. I joined the class late and missed the first class where everyone taught so on my first day I walked into class and Professor Yang came up to me shook my hand and said your teaching. WHAT? I was like a deer in headlights I had no lesson plan no equipment it was horrible. This activity though made me a better teacher right off the bat. From the first day when I showed up to class in jeans and boots until the day I taught my D-lab I feel I have transformed into a brand new educator. Not saying I’m anywhere near perfect but I have come leaps and bounds passed what I was a couple of months ago.
EDU 255 has brought me to a teaching plateau that I am extremely happy with. I feel so much more confident in my teaching abilities and have learned a little piece of my own teaching style. In three out of my four labs I used teaching by invitation at some point in my lesson. I really enjoy being able to have two or three productive activities planned and allowing the kids to choose which activity they would rather play. I feel this technique would engage my students and have them gain somewhat of a liking for my classes and will participate and come more.
Teaching Step Aerobics was a lot of fun to work with and develop a lesson plan for. Though not my first choice on activity I need to be able to teach Step Aerobics at some point in my career and I really feel as though I prepared myself well for what I was in store for. Watching my lesson made me see some really good things and some not so good thing. I still say alright a lot which is bugging me to no end. Its amazing I never, ever, say alright but as soon as I get in front of a class I say it fifty times. My time coding form is still not up to where I would like it to be, there was way too much instruction going on in my Step Aerobics lesson. If I were to teach again I would not have done the stations for the simple fact that I had to explain all of them. The stations were fun and allowed me to move around to give more feedback, but took way too long to get started. I really liked how much feedback I gave, there were only a few students who didn’t receive any feedback from me. Overall I would say that this was a successful lesson and a great example of how far I have came. C-9

St. Mary's Lab 5

The kids absolutely love tag games. It is amazing how no matter how long you play it for they love it all you have to do is tweak up the rules a little and you can play tag with these age groups for hours. Some of our games I feel were a little over their heads or maybe they just didn’t want to play our games they just wanted to play what they wanted after a whole day of being told what to do. Some of the kids will not focus on the movements but rather the game and how the game is going. For example if you are observing the dribbling of a soccer ball through an obstacle course the kids may kick the ball once and just run and follow the ball rather than dribble it.

St. Mary's Lab 4

The most difficult part about the labs is trying to calm the kids down so we can play the games and explain the rules. The kids have just sat through a whole day of school and the last thing they want to do is listen to more instructions so I can’t really blame them for being so crazy. The environment is fine I think it’s the perfect size for us to perform our games and keep an eye on everyone. Well the kids obviously can’t miss school so the only suggestion I have is to have like a huge instant activity where the kids can run around all over the place and basically do what they want and after like 15-20 minutes stop the activity and separate the kids and begin the planned activities.

St. Mary's Lab 3

Today we observed two 6 year old Kindergarteners Rowan and Anthony. We observed their leaping, horizontal jump, and sliding. Rowan and Anthony were very similar in their movements and made similar mistakes and corrections. Though similar in movements Anthony was slightly more developmentally coordinated than Rowan. I scored Anthony higher in all of the movements but not by much. My group worked with the pre-K group for the first time today and it truly was a different experience. I played with some of the kids using the toy dinosaurs and coloring books. I also read children’s picture books to the kids who were a little less wired. While reading it was very hard to keep the kids off of my lap or touching my arms and stuff. Though harmless the kids don’t realize how that can be a very bad thing and could get a teacher in trouble so I tried to get them to do the Criss-cross apple sauce thing but it didn’t work too well. I still feel getting down on their level is by far the most effective understanding way to get the kids attention.