The Supersized PhysEd Podcast
The Supersized Physed Podcast is dedicated to providing new ideas, activities and inspiration to our physical education field. Each week a new episode about various physed topics comes out, sometimes with a guest, sometimes it's just me!
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The Supersized PhysEd Podcast
Tear it Down! Revamping Your Physical Education Program
Hello Friends!
Imagine revolutionizing your teaching methods to leave a lasting legacy rather than coasting to retirement. In today’s episode of the SuperSized Physed podcast, I, reflect on my journey as a physical educator inspired by Robin Sharma's wisdom on avoiding monotony. We explore the unique challenges of teaching PE in Florida, from the relentless heat to the physical demands, and the urgent need for innovation.
Get ready to shake up your PE curriculum with fresh ideas and strategies! This episode outlines my plan to revamp my classes by incorporating new and engaging activities while retaining only a handful of classic games like Rollout and Tchoukball. Influenced by Coach Krzyzewski, I discuss reducing my reliance on the whistle to foster better student engagement and embracing the Tactical Games Approach (TGFU) to incorporate strategic thinking and cooperative learning. We'll also discuss starting the year with cooperative activities to help mitigate issues like cheating and conflicts among students. Join me for practical insights and strategies to bring innovation and excitement back to physical education.
Take Care PE Nation,
Dave
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Hello and welcome to the Super Size for Zed podcast. My name is Dave and today I want to talk about your program and should you keep it or should you tear it down? So, without further ado, here we go. All right, pe Nation, welcome back.
Speaker 1:So there's a quote that I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I'm sure I'm going to get it wrong, but it's by my favorite author and motivational speaker, robin Sharma, and it's something along the lines of don't do the same thing for 80 years and call it a life. And I believe he's also said don't do the same thing for 30 years and call it a career. So I take that as don't teach the same thing for 30 years and call it a career. I don't want to look back and say, wow, I just did the same things over and over again every single year for my elementary school physical education students for 30 years and just said, oh well, I had a great career, that's awesome and that'd be pretty easy for me and a lot of us, I think, in the phys ed world to do this. After all, our subject isn't weighted the same as math or reading. No one, for the most part, is watching us like a hawk. Honestly, no one would even know if I was hitting my standards or not. Our standards are pretty loose anyway, so you could justify any game or activity, really. Hey, we're playing kickball, we're working on these five standards, we're cooperatively working together, we're enjoying being active. We're striking an object, we're showing a mature kicking pattern. Hey, we're even measuring heart rates as we're doing it. I could do that with anything, and I know you could too, but that's not why I got into this. That's not what I want to do and that's not the legacy I want to leave. And I hope you could too, but that's not why I got into this. That's not what I want to do and that's not the legacy I want to leave, and I hope you feel the same way.
Speaker 1:You know I've brought most of my former games and warm-up dances and things from my former school that I was at for almost 10 years to my current one, and I'm going into my fourth year now. I mean I've done Timber like the Kidz Bop version, probably, I don't know a couple thousand times as a warm-up song. Not just that song, but I'm thinking of Timber, shake it Off and some of these songs. I could keep doing them with the little kids, kindergarten, first have certain warm-up games and activities I do, and then the older, like fourth and fifth, have a little bit of dance but more exercise. And then the older, like fourth and fifth, have more, a little bit of dance but more exercise. And then second and third are kind of in between. You know, I could do a lot of that stuff over and over and over again and look back and say, hey, I did a great job and I think I am doing a great job, or at least a very, very good job there.
Speaker 1:But that's not how I want to. It's not how I want to look back and say, wow, I know that song, that's all I've done for 20 years is timber and shake it off and YMCA and things like that Cha-cha slide. You know, I want to branch out, I want to do more things and I really think it's time to just start from the beginning and just completely start over. Realistically, I'll probably teach another 10 more years, I'm maybe more and I hope more if that's possible. But you know it's it's hot here in Florida. It's really hot. The heat really gets to me, um, and it just drains me between the heat, the physical toll just from jumping around. I've had a lot of things lately my knee, I've had foot surgery. I think 10 more years is realistic and I'd like to do more and maybe I could find a different thing or location or virtual teaching or something, but I just physically I think 10 more years is about right.
Speaker 1:I have sunspots that I have to get zapped off me all the time. I do wear a hat and sunglasses and sunblock every day, but just from the damage that by the way, living in Buffalo it's not even in Florida just growing up without a lot of sunblock, I guess I have sunspots. Even right now. I put medicine to try to get rid of some sunspots. I have spots all over my head. My head is like a big roadmap. It's very, very difficult If I taught inside, like some of you do.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying it's easier, but as far as the sun, obviously it is, and the heat and just the humidity is ridiculous. When I start teaching in August I can measure the humidity by how many shirts I wear per day. I usually wear about three and I'm not kidding you, at eight o'clock in the morning I'm drenched in sweat If I'm not doing anything, just standing out there under the pavilion. It's a lot. So that, all that being said, I think 10 years about right for um, just again, the physical toll. And if I stay in Florida, if I stay outside, um. So, with that being said, um, you know I again, I keep doing the same things. Um, I don't want to, and you know I can coast to retirement. I really could. No one would know the difference and I think everybody would be like, oh wow, great job, coach Carney. But that's just not right. It's not right for my kids, it's not right for me, it's not right for my administration.
Speaker 1:It's part of a trilogy from Austin Kleon. He also did steal like an artist and keep keep going. I think it's called yes and um, just incredible books and they're easy to read. Uh, definitely check those out. So this one's from show your work. He's talking about, um, the comedian Louis CK and uh. So here's just some things I highlighted. So it says when you feel like you've learned whatever there is to learn from what you're doing, it's time to change course and find something new to learn so that you can move forward. You can't be content with mastery. You have to push yourself to become a student again. And, by the way, that makes me feel like I need to become a beginner again, just start over. Become a white belt again and I am a black belt, by the way, just as a side note belt again, and I am a black belt, by the way, just as a side note.
Speaker 1:So, comedian Louis CK he worked on the same hour of material for 15 years. I mean, he just kept doing the same thing for 15 years until he found out that his hero, george Carlin, threw out his material every year and started from scratch. So I'm going to skip a little bit. Ck was scared to do it, but once he did, it set him free and he said you got to dig deeper, you got to get rid of old material. You push yourself further to come up with something better. When you throw out your old work, what you're really doing is making room for new work. And he talked about how freeing it is. It's just, it's more freeing and you can do different things. And, yeah, starting over was the best thing for him.
Speaker 1:So after I read that the other night, that just really got me. I mean, it got me really thinking. You know, I don't want to be lazy, I don't want to be repetitive, I don't want to be stale. You know I don't want to just do the same thing over and over again and do a greatest hits menu of songs and games every single year. The kids change, times change. When I said kids, I mean their interests change, and that means I should too. That began my journey of looking back over my old work and seeing where I could make new things happen this current school year coming up.
Speaker 1:So, again, this is a work in progress. I'm not done. I just started this the other day, but it really got me thinking and I want to put this out to the world because I just want to tell you my plan and see if anyone can resonate with this, what I'm going to do here. So here's the plan I'm going to throw out my old games, except a few. Now, those few, I think I even have it narrowed down to like four. One of them is Rollout, and I've done a podcast about Rollout.
Speaker 1:It's great for days like actually today. I don't know if you hear that in the background, but we have thunder and it's been raining. It's a really good game for under the pavilion. I'm not going to go into great detail, but that's one of them. I'm going to keep Chookball, because I do Chookball every year with my fifth graders, and I'm going to keep certain versions of Capture the Flag, but I'm going to revamp that as well. I'm going to keep Prairie Dog Pickoff, which is a Joey Fyfe game that I learned. I've talked about that quite a bit. I just think it's a really great game and it's a good game to bring out for me, at least on those days when, again, going back to teaching, that other game, rollout. We sometimes do those games when everything's kind of wet and the courts are wet and I could just squeegee a little bit enough to play.
Speaker 1:It's just a few games like that where I just want to keep in my back pocket just in case, but for the most part I just want to get rid of everything. I also want to bring back a couple songs, but not the same old, same old songs every time. I want to listen to new songs, find new games, new warmups, new everything. I'm also considering bringing back power teaching and I did an episode on that as well, where you'd say class and they'd say yes and say class, yes, and then they'd be ready to go and they also do a teach okay. So you'd ask them to teach something to a partner and they'd say, okay, things like that. Again, that's a whole nother podcast. And also I do a thing called Match Me. I want to keep that where the kids match me. I usually do that with the younger students, but my goal is to get rid of the whistle, or at least for the most part.
Speaker 1:So I was reading a Coach K a Coach Krzyzewski book, a Mike Krzyzewski book. K, a Coach Krzyzewski book, a Mike Krzyzewski book, and he said again, if you don't know who that is, he coached the Duke Blue Devils, for I don't know forever, and he's just a great leader. He also coached the USA basketball team, the Redeem team that came back and won the gold medal. So he said in practice, he doesn't ever use a whistle because he wants to be right there with them, he wants to make sure they hear him, and he is he. Just the way he justified it I was like, oh yeah, that's, that's a good idea, but he also didn't have 130 kids at a time.
Speaker 1:But my goal is to use the whistle less. That's just my goal. I just think that it's. It's I don't know. Sometimes I feel like it's a crutch for me that I just have that and I use that probably too much, where maybe the kids tune me out a little bit. So it's not just new games, it's a new style of teaching and learning. So the thing I want to do and I've been wanting to do this for a few years is through.
Speaker 1:It's definitely using the TGFU, the tactical games approach, and actually I have this book in front of me. I'm going to base a lot of it off there, so I'm going to give a shout out to these people. It's called Teaching Sport Concepts and Skills a Tactical Games Approach. It's by Stephen Mitchell and Judith Oslin and a few other people. I just don't have it on the page with me. This book is great. I love TGFU, if you don't know what, on the page with me. So this book is great and I love TGFU.
Speaker 1:If you don't know what that is, again, that's a whole other topic, but it's basically teaching the sports through a different model of approach. It is breaking down into target games, striking fielding games, net wall games and invasion games and also evasion games. By the way, there's other individual sports and other things as well, or individual games, but it's breaking those down and teaching in a new way. Let's just say I'm not going to go into detail on that, but using the TGFU model, I do that, what I consider a hybrid, with my TGFU sport education fifth grade chookball tournament every year. Again, it's not perfect, but that's my way of using it and I want to do more of that. I want to do more where students are the leaders and there's more questioning. There's more thinking I guess not just playing and yeah, we're going to play, we always play but there's more thinking, there's more doing, there's more learning, there's more involvement with every student. Now, the logistics of this is not easy. It's going to take a lot of patience, a lot of small steps and we use more cooperative learning, learning the first month especially. That's another thing I've noticed I'm sure you have too the students getting mad at each other or cheating at games, things like that. I want to work on that more in the beginning. I mean I do, but I just want to work on that even more and come up with some new ideas. And again, this is a work in progress. I don't have all the answers right now. This is just what I'm thinking and I'm starting to plan.
Speaker 1:I used to do something called Monday Run Day at my former school and I would do Fun Fridays, which I still do. I didn't bring Monday Run Day to my new school because of the heat. I mean, it was hot where I, it was hot in my former school too. But I want to do more. Um, I don't do enough, I guess. Exercise stuff like just actual pushups and squats and, uh, we can't really do sit-ups and curl-ups but, um, things where they're the more functional, uh, for later on in life. Movements and stretches, static stretches. We do a lot of dynamic warmups, so things like that might be a Monday, like a move at Monday, um, but with a lap or two in there just getting cause.
Speaker 1:I want to start a running club when it gets less hot in the, maybe in the fall. So things like that I want to change. And then maybe my main lessons are Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, with Friday being fun Friday. They get to choose different stations, so those kind of things. I want to bring some things back, I want to rework some things, but basically I just want to tear it all down. I really do. We have a point system at the end of the day where they roll the dice. Kids love it, but I feel like the point system wasn't working as well. It wasn't really motivating them. They just want to roll the dice.
Speaker 1:So I'm just again, I'm in the planning stage and I'm going to document all this. I want to start doing that as well, where you know, again, I want to be a beginner again and just start, start over, start from scratch and see where it leads me and see if, you know, I could do these new and different and exciting games and rework the model, the way I teach, and see where it leads me. So some of the games I want to play we didn't do any Frisbee last year, really maybe a tiny bit, and we tried to finish the year. We just ran out of time with volleyball-type games, like net wall games, but we just ran out of time with volleyball-type games like netball games, but we just ran out of time. So purposeful planning on my part is one thing that I also want to kind of re-look at Just making sure we cover everything and we get in not only the games but the concepts that have been lacking, I guess, in the past. So I don't know it's a lot, but I want to invite you along for the journey. I want to keep documenting this. I want to keep talking about this and hopefully it'll go well and I'll report back and it's going to be a great thing. I really think it will be a great thing. I'm very excited about it. I'm more excited than I have been in the past, or at least recently, going into a new school year.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, let's go on to our cowbell tip of the day. All right, everybody. So your cowbell tip of the day is you know it's exciting and hard work starting over. You're basically a beginner, but it's freeing. It feels like it so far and it's necessary sometimes. It's necessary to start over and don't be stale and lazy and repetitive and do the same things over and over again, like I said for your whole career, and say, wow, I did a great job, keep pushing, keep growing, keep learning, keep innovating. You can do this. I'm not saying you have to start over necessarily, but take a look at your games, take a look at what you're doing and see where you can improve and what you can do to revamp your system. And I know you can do it. I have faith in you and I just know, if you're listening to this, you're looking for that spark or that encouragement. Well, here it is and I know you can do it and that is your cowbell tip of the day.
Speaker 1:Thank you everyone for tuning in. I really do appreciate it If you found this thoughtful, insightful, if you laughed a little bit, if you just thought of a new idea or something. Please leave a review. It helps grow the show. The link is in the show notes. It'll take three seconds, maybe five, but I do appreciate that If you could leave a quick review. You are awesome, pe nation. Have a great day, week, weekend. Whenever you're listening to this I see you in the car, I see you working out. You're doing awesome. Keep it up and let's keep pushing our profession forward. We'll see you next time, thank you.
