A few quotes

Throughout the years I have found quotes, heard some, and even written them all down if I liked them.  I have come across some good ones that are related to teaching and they seem to really fit who I am as a learner and who I plan to become as a teacher. 

One of them is:“We ourselves must walk the path, teachers merely show the way”.  This quote I feel has a very good meaning to it.  A teacher cannot make the student do something, but a teacher can give them the right tools to make something of themselves.  Here at Cortland, that is exactly what they are doing.  The teachers here are giving me the right tools to become a good physical education but I am going to be the one who is going to be doing the teacher.  When I become a teacher, this quote is going to be something that I hope I will provide for students.  A healthy lifestyle is just something that I can teach and it is the students who need to actually follow it.

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -- Benjamin Franklin, this is another one of my favorite quotes.  I have learned this over the years that learning is better when you are more involved.  When I went to Raquette Lake I remember one of the teachers telling everyone that he knows we are P.E. majors because when it comes to lectures we are not involved at all, but when it came time to actually do something, we were all active learners.  When it comes to physical education, being involved and actually participating in class is the best way to learn how to do things. 

Finally another one is: "Learning is finding out what we already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers."  Richard Bach.  The last line is this quote is one of my favorites and something that I try to live by.  We are all learners, doers and teachers no matter where we stand on the spectrum.  That was something that was involved in Chapter one of the book, The Teaching Profession and You, one of the criteria for teachers one what they should know, teachers are permanent learners.  Teachers learn from their students when it comes to teaching them how to do something.  If that way does not work then, the teacher has to change their strategy. 

So to conclude this blog, these three quotes are things that I try to live by in my teaching profession.  Each one of these quotes fits how I learn and how I plan to teach in the future.  Teachers have been showing me the way to becoming a good teacher for the past four years, but I am the one who is going to be the teacher so I have to use those things and walk in that way.  I learn by doing.  I feel that in physical education, that is how someone is supposed to learn.  You cannot sit and watch something going on and expect to know what you are doing.  Some people are gifted like that, but practice makes perfect.  No matter what anyone says, we are always going to be permanent learners no matter where we go in life or what profession we get into. 

A little overdue

             Creating a blog was not so hard; it is just trying to figure out ways to create the page that takes awhile.  It is a little different than anything else I have ever used before.  It is time consuming and I sometimes forget that I have to do it.  But also I have no idea what really to write about, so that makes blogging a little more difficult.  But I guess there is no right or wrong answer and it is just all my opinions.  

For the first class we learned about every bodies name and their “favorite” dance move.  We also started up our gmail, blog, and twitter.  Our first blog was I hope, will, and believe, we also created a video to it (which I have yet to get).  Our first class was a little overwhelming and something completely new to me.  I was not expecting to be doing something like this for this class, but I know that I will be learning about a lot more than just how to write papers. 

Over the summer I did not really do anything that helped me become a better teacher.  I work two jobs and neither of them deals with children or my profession.  But I have been around children all my life, my mom owns and runs a day care center in my house.  So I have been around children all summer, I watched many of them go through the stages that I learned about in Motor Development, and even used some of my Adventure Activities games on them.

            I did go to Raquette Lake where I learned about outdoor education, which is something that I will be incorporating into my curriculum when I become a teacher.  That is something that I feel has helped me become a better teacher.  It is something that I really enjoyed and feel that it is something that students should be introduced to.  It entails survival skills which is something that is really important because you never know what can happen.  It also has a lot of physical activity from hiking, canoeing, and kayaking.  Those two things are very good exercise for anyone and best of all everything that is involved with outdoor education, is a lifelong activity.

The New York State Curriculum Framework is about things that we are supposed to teach that leads up to lifelong utilization.  These skills in outdoor education are a lifelong skill that everyone can do at any age.  So therefore there is one thing that I did over the summer that will make me a better teacher, going to Raquette Lake.  Also my students will learn more effectively because they will learn by doing and being involved.  Students will not be sitting in a classroom learning about how to hold a compass and then get them someplace, they will actually be outside getting themselves somewhere.  This is something that the students will be able to learn about and then use in their future.

The Teaching Profession

           While reading The Teaching Profession and You, there is a part in there that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards lists five criteria; commitment to students, mastery of the subject area, ability to effectively manage a classroom, a continuous analysis of teaching performance, and having a commitment to learning and self improvement.  I agree with all five of these criteria. 

            I feel that a teacher should be very committed to their students.  If a teacher is not committed to their students then the students learning can be affected.  The teacher will not put time into teaching them because they just do not care about the student’s progress.  Also the teacher needs to be able to help students if they need help, but help them the way they need it.  If one student learns differently than another, a teacher needs to recognize that and try to teach to help that student also.  A teacher is there for the students and is willing to work with them to help further their knowledge.

            A teacher should definitely know everything about the subject they are supposed to be teaching.  If a teacher does not understand everything about their subject then it can affect how a student learns.  Without really understanding the content, where it comes from, how it can link to other areas, and how to teach it, then the teacher is not fully doing their job.  Once a teacher gets into a classroom they are expected to know what they are talking about and need to teach the students that content.  By knowing the content, the teachers are able to apply it to real life situations and then apply that to students. 

            Being able to manage a classroom can be a rough task, any beginner can tell you that.  But under these criteria, a teacher needs to know how to manage a classroom effectively and monitor the students learning.  This, I feel, comes with time, like all the other criteria.  Managing a classroom takes time to get to know the students routine from the previous teacher and how they will react to a new teacher.  After some time with getting to know the students then managing a classroom becomes easier, a teacher has learned how to engage students or how to work with their learning capabilities. 

            One thing that I learned about how to teach is to incorporate other classes into my own class.  So that would mean working with the other teachers in the school setting.  This is something that can come in handy when it comes to teaching.  By working with the other professionals, a teacher is able to add more to their curriculum.  It can help the students learning and can also help out the curriculum planning.  Everything needs to be based off the students.  Whatever can help them learn more and effectively should be done.  By working with other professionals this can get accomplished. 

            Finally, teachers are permanent learners, nobody ever really stops learning.  Teachers are always teaching students but in return the students are teaching the teacher.  This coincides with the other criteria I feel.  The teacher learns from their students and how effective they are with them, learns about how good they are with their content knowledge, what to do and what not to do when it comes to managing their classroom, and how involved they need to be with their other professionals.  A teacher learns how to better their teaching based off their own mistakes while teaching.  Many different people learn by doing, so by doing those people learn how to fix their previous mistakes.

Physical Education and Me

     I have known for a very long time that I have wanted to be a physical education teacher.  I love to teach, I to love play with kids, and I just love kids.  Throughout my years of being a student, my physical education has not been very good.  Granted, I do not remember elementary or middle school all that well, so I cannot just say it was all horrible because i do not remember it all.  But high school is when I realized that I wanted to be a physical education teacher. 
        My high school physical education teacher was horrible.   She was not the type to just roll out a ball, she was more the type to not do anything but worry about the rules.  Every day in class for the first two days on a new unit we would do nothing but sit there and go over the rules of the game.  Then when it actually came time to play, we had to sit there and listen to her give us play by play on what we are suppose to do and what we are not suppose to do.  I do know that as a teacher you are suppose to teach the students about the rules and how to play the game, but that goes to a certain extent.  There is the tactical way of teaching students and also I was in high school, so by then I should have already known about how to play a game.  Also I have learned now that by high school we are suppose to be getting away from sport oriented class, well my classes were just that.  We did not even do the physical fitness test, which is something that can be rather important in physical education because it allows the teacher to assess you and see where you as the student stand in comparison to others.  Not only that but if someone is worried about their weight or how they are out of shape, then the physical fitness test can help a student set up their own fitness plan.  My teacher just spent too long on the rules of a game  than just letting us as high school students and "adults" figure it out on our own.  She also did not really teach us anything about personal fitness.  We never really learned about ways to keep ourselves healthy or fit in the future.  Coming to Cortland, I did not know a lot of these fitness tests that some other students have done.  I did not know how to create a fitness plan or even what one was.  The only thing i really knew about was the rules of any game because that is what I was taught.
    Another thing that my teacher was not very known for, was assessing students.  I was a year round athlete and she was my coach for one of them.  If you were an athlete, you were set in her class.  If you weren't, then you were looked at like you had no idea what you were doing and you had to do everything just as well as the athletes did.  It did not matter if I walked in late or not prepared, I was still getting an E in the class.  So the class was very unfair when it came to grading.  I was not complaining but now that I know that is wrong, I realize that it was not fair to the other people in my classes.   She never really kept with her consequences either.  So when someone was not prepared for class, a disengaged student who just did not want to go to class, she just let them be and never made them go change.
   She is the reason why I am becoming a physical education teacher.  I do not want students to hate or dislike physical education because they do not enjoy it.  Class can be fun for everyone if you have a teacher who actually cares about it and has the right tools for it.  I feel that she is one of the reasons why phys. ed has the reputation it does.  We never had any assessments being done so our grades were either an E, S, or U.  We never had any tests, quizzes, homework anything written.  She had her favorites, and if you were not a favorite or an athlete, your phys. ed class miserable. 
     Another reason why I became is because I love working with kids.  I have grown up with a day care center in my house since I was about 8 years old.  The kids make my day when I see them and I just love being around them.  I see what my mom does with the kids, and she makes a difference in their life every day that they are there.  The parents are so grateful to my mom for what she does and I just want to make a difference in a child's life like that.  The kids just make my day better even if I am only with them for only a little while.  They have such big personalities that can just make you smile.  When I went to my 355 observations, I would go there miserable because I was always tired because it was early, but once I started playing with the second graders I left that school feeling much better.  I was smiling and in a much better mood.  At first I only wanted to do high school, but after that, I want to teach elementary.
    When I become a teacher, I will be doing things the way I was taught to do them.  I have been given all the tools to do it and I will use them.  Something I was always taught was you have the ability and the tools, so just put them together.  Cortland has taught me so much on what a good physical education teacher should be like and i have the motivation to make that difference in someones life.