Five "Musts" For Every Physical Education Program

Greetings PE Nation!
This episode focuses on five vital components necessary for a successful physical education program. By implementing clear rules and procedures, setting high expectations, crafting a structured reward system, defining a mission statement, and fostering a fun learning environment, educators can enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. Take a listen!

Dave

• Importance of establishing clear rules and procedures
• Setting high expectations for students and self
• Creating an effective reward system to motivate students
• Developing a guiding mission or vision statement
• Ensuring a fun and engaging learning environment in PE

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Link to the article: https://medium.com/@pe_dave1017/5-musts-for-every-physical-education-program-c9e2ab8d1f1f

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Website for the book: https://www.teacherchefhockeyplayerbook.com/

Chapters

• 0:11 Five Musts for PE Program
• 14:21 Physical Education Program Priorities
• 18:20 Creating Fun Learning Experiences in PE
• 29:42 Maximizing Professional Development Opportunities

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Supersize Phys Ed podcast. My name is Dave and today I want to talk about five things, or rather five musts for your PE program, things you have to have no matter what, and there's many more, but these are the five top things that I think you need for your PE program to survive and thrive in this environment. So, without further ado, here we go. All right, pe Nation, welcome in. So today I want to talk about the five top things your PE program needs to thrive Not just survive, but thrive. And I've made a lot of mistakes. I actually documented them and told you about them in a recent podcast and a recent article I wrote. So, yes, I've made a lot of mistakes, but I've also learned from my mistakes and I definitely know what it takes to have a just a really well-oiled machine in PE in my program. It's not perfect. Students are not perfect. I have great students, but things happen. But these are the five things I've learned over the years that you have to have in order to have a successful PE program, and I'm going to make this a boomer. So here we go. Number one program and I'm going to make this a boomer. So here we go. Number one, all right. Number one is clear rules and procedures, and I think that's definitely number one for a reason you have to establish rules and procedures from day one and go over them, especially the first couple of weeks of school. But, by the way, if this is something you need to focus on moving forward, don't wait until August or September or whenever you start to just give up on the year. You can do this at any time. It's just implementing these. It's harder if you're doing this in January or February, but it can be done. It's so important and you need to spend time on it.

Speaker 1: 2:29

But there are some things that I just didn't know. Walking into my first year of PE, I didn't know that there's so many fine details that I just wasn't prepared for, and I had paras, and some of you do that were grilling me. I don't want to say in a bad way, I know grilling sounds like a bad word, but they were grilling me the day before school started, on my first day of school of PE, and you know it's asked me questions that I had no answers for and I have an article I wrote that I'll link to this that goes into some other kind of details. But some of the questions they asked me were like when classes come in, do students have an assigned dot or can they sit wherever they want? You know, how do they get drinks? When do they get drinks? When do they go to the bathroom? How do they go to the bathroom? You know like what procedures and some were pretty harsh, like they were used to just if somebody walks on the grass, like even for, like steps on the grass instead of on the white line, do they go sit out? And I was kind of blown away by that, but the answer was no to that, by the way. But you know what and what do we do, like what do the paras do when the classes arrive? And I just wasn't prepared for all that. You know, I had a week to prepare, but the paras were only there and still only there the day before school starts. So I don't get a chance to really talk to them and it just took a while.

Speaker 1: 3:55

So my suggestion is well, first of all, be prepared, but also know well, you can't know everything, but try to figure out from the start of class, actually before the start of class, when students come in and as they're walking towards you, even what's going to happen. And where do they stop to wait for you, maybe? Or all these little details? Where do they sit? Can they choose? What are the signals you're going to use? What are the bathroom and drink procedures? Where do they put their things? If they have water bottles or lunch boxes or whatever, how do they line up? How do they clean up? How do they move from station to station? All sorts of things. If there's a fire drill, lockdown drill, all these things are important and you need to figure out what you want so you can communicate that to the teachers and, if you have paras, communicate that to everybody and make sure they're not only on your side but they know what to expect from you.

Speaker 1: 4:58

So I'd say that's number one. And again, if you're behind on that or you just didn't spend enough time on that, it's okay to go back and really focus on that for the new year or whenever you're listening to this. But spending a week or two I mean sometimes more with like kindergarten if you have kindergarten on these things are so important. So definitely, you know, spend time on that. Rules and procedures you have to have that and very clear rules and procedures, and without that, everything else it just falls to pieces. So number one clear rules and procedures. Number two is high expectations.

Speaker 1: 5:41

So this took me a moment or two when I first started teaching PE, because I had some negative nancies. I had people saying, oh, these kids are horrible and they're never going to learn and they're not going to change, so just why bother, let's just do our thing and get out of there. They might not have said it exactly like that, but they definitely said things like that. It's just a rough group and these fifth graders or whatever. And what I noticed, a few things. What I noticed when I first got there was in a school of it was it was over a thousand in a school of over a thousand students. You know, as far as the really, you know the behaviors, the really tough behaviors you're talking like for me, for me, 15 kids, 20 kids. So it's a very small percentage. And yeah, it's important to work with them, work with the parents, work with the administration.

Speaker 1: 6:37

But let's have higher expectations of yourself and your students and you'll be surprised if you're not already that they'll try to meet those expectations If you set clear goals and clear. You know we talk about rules and procedures and we'll talk about some other things coming up. Let's, you know, have that glass half full approach rather than the glass half empty approach. You know there are ways to turn things around. Trust me, I've had some classes, oh my gosh. I've had some classes and some grade levels that have been really challenging. But you know, if you talk to these kids, especially the ones that are giving you problems I'm not saying it's always perfect and they're definitely going to turn around, but most of them are willing to listen to you and if you explain what you're trying to do and the goals you have and the games you want to play and what you know they can look forward to, you know, you again, you might be surprised at how much they want to play.

Speaker 1: 7:37

This is PE. Most kids want to play and you know, I know, I know it's not everybody in the school of. You know, let's just go with a thousand, a thousand kids. There's gonna be some kids that don't like PE and it's unfortunate and it's our job to give them different choices and give them different you know ways of participating and things like that. So everybody can be successful in PE and please have that mindset of of that. You know, everybody can be respectful of each other. Everybody can achieve their goals in PE. Everybody can. Maybe not everybody can throw a ball, you know, like some of these, I have some really good, you know, travel baseball kids, but that's okay. You know what I mean. They can earn their grade or whatever. However, you grade them in different ways. Maybe they know the strategies really well, maybe they know the cues but are just having difficulty. So please don't give up on them or anybody. Praise them and praise is always the best thing, and we'll talk about rewards in just a moment but praise them, ask them questions, challenging questions, thoughtful questions. Use team building games in the beginning of the year to create that culture of helpfulness and respect model how we resolve conflicts and treat each other and, you know, hold them to a higher standard.

Speaker 1: 8:54

I just I don't want to be that, debbie Downer, and they say you're the average of the whatever, the five people you hang out with the most and fortunately or unfortunately, you know when you're at school all day or wherever you are working, and you're hanging out with the same people and some of them are, you know, debbie Downers, that's you know. You have to shrug that away and do what you have to do for your students. So that is number two have high expectations. So that is number two have high expectations. Number three is a reward system. So this is the fun stuff. You know, students, we want them to have intrinsic motivation. We want them to do good for goodness sake, we want them to be kind to others and do their best at all times.

Speaker 1: 9:46

And it just a lot of kids yeah, they do that, but some students, they need that tangible item and in our school we have some different ways of doing this and I actually added some other things. So the first part of it is having a reward slip or some kind of paper for students that they can use to buy small things. It could be going into a prize box, but it also could be just saving up for a party, being a teacher, helper or other things. In my school they're called bear paws. In my former school they were called bear paws. In my former school they were called koki cash, because koki is a koki frog. So a lot of schools have them like a universal system and I think that's the best. If your school is on the same page, every teacher, every administrator, everybody is on the same page, with a certain currency, I guess.

Speaker 1: 10:41

But I've seen, when I was, let's see, I was subbing, I was a long-term subbing position. It's a long time ago. I was taking over for a teacher ready to go on maternity leave and so I shadowed her for a little bit to see how she know runs her class this is like a fourth grade class, I believe and she had her own like money system. I mean that she made, and you know her students could purchase things, you know, at the end of the month at a little quote unquote store she had, or again, she you know they could buy things that are not. They're not as tangible but they're more like, you know, be a teacher helper for a day or lunch with a teacher or things like that. So coming up with a reward system like that is amazing and it's something tangible, like I'm saying, like a piece of paper, that it could be a like a ticket, a raffle ticket, and they could put it in a jar and you pull out, you know they put their names on them and at the end of the whatever week, month you pull out names for prizes, things like that.

Speaker 1: 11:44

Anything like a reward slip is a great idea because when kids are sitting nicely on their dots or whatever and other kids are not. You can hand them out and be like oh, I love how so-and-so you're sitting, great, isabella, oh I love it, please, you know, whatever. And then you'll see kids around her acting better or sitting up straight and crossing their legs and things like that. It gets other kids around them noticing hey, she got rewarded, so I can do something great too and maybe get rewarded as well. And again, I know that's, you know, not intrinsic motivation, but it leads to that. And then you know you reward a lot in the beginning of the year or whenever you're going to implement this, and then you can back off a little bit so you know they're doing the right thing, without always getting the reward, but in the beginning reward a lot. And let me give you a couple other things I do so.

Speaker 1: 12:39

I do a class point system and you can do this however you want, but I do grade levels. They, once they get to a certain amount, I kind of look at the calendar and be like okay, at the end of like, like, just, we just got done, we're actually getting ready to go back to school after Christmas break. So right before Christmas break. I was, you know, like around like Thanksgiving. I was setting up a goal for them to get to, I don't know 150 points by a certain date and they get a free day. So they'd work on things like if they're there on Mondays, we do move at Monday points. If kids are trying their best, each coach gets a vote of zero, one or two, because there's three of us and we have three different kind of sections we're monitoring so they can get up to six points there.

Speaker 1: 13:29

And then we do what about on Wednesdays, where again you get up to six points. If most kids brought them, we give them six points, if very few brought them, we give them two or three, things like that. And at the end of every day we roll the dice. We have foam dice, we give them out to the kids that are either sitting nicely or they did a great job during that day and they roll them. We do like a three, two, one, okay, roll, and they roll a certain way, in a certain direction, and we don't add them all up because that'd be a lot. But if somebody gets a six which somebody almost always gets a six they get six points and if they walk out silently. They get double Because it is a silent hallway even though we're outside. They're supposed to walk back to the classroom silently. We do triple point Friday. So if they do that, I mean like not a peep, they get like up to 18 points.

Speaker 1: 14:21

And right before break we did. I mean they were just in the holiday spirit. We were doing a warmup. It was a fit radio warmup I was doing and had jingle bells on it and they were just all into it. They were just singing and dancing and doing exercises and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna give you holiday spirit points. You know, just, you can do whatever you want with that.

Speaker 1: 14:40

I would definitely say don't take points away though. Once you give points, don't take points away. Some people do that. I get it, but I don't. I think once they earn it, they earn it. That's up to you.

Speaker 1: 14:51

The last thing I'll say is I do on Fridays. We got our mascot Webster back. That's a whole other story, but Webster's back and I introduced him to kindergarten recently. So kindergarten, first grade. He gives out Webster beads to the boys and girls doing a great job or have done a great job that week and the older boys and girls. We do the Wheel of. It's either like Wheel of Fifth Grade or Wheel of Fourth Grade. It's like Wheel of Fortune, and there's different things written on it, like they could be a DJ for the day, or they can pick where their student, their class, are going during the free day. They get extra bear paws, or they get class bear paws or extra team points for their grade level, things like that, and the kids love it. It's absolutely, it's awesome. So we'll call up the kids that do they've done a great job.

Speaker 1: 15:39

And I'd say the last thing is and I said this in the last thing was praise goes a long way, praising students and specific praise. I know it's hard, it really is hard to say hey instead of just saying hey, great job. It's harder, but it's more effective to say hey, jimmy, you did a great job throwing the ball over there. I love the way you step and you know, threw it with your opposite foot and you know, I know that's not easy to do that when you have like a billion kids, but you know, praise goes a long way, but that, though that is number three. That will definitely have a reward. Number four is a mission statement or vision statement or overall philosophy, and when I say mission statement, you know you're not Jerry Maguire, you're not going to be like hold up the goldfish saying who's coming with me, things like that.

Speaker 1: 16:33

But you need to have and I wrote in my book like you need to have, you need to know your true north, need to have and I wrote in my book like you need to have, you need to know your true North. You need to have that North star, that guiding light that you follow. You can't just well, you can, but you should not just be all over the place. You need to know. You know what your class is going to look like. You need to know what the structure of your class is going to be. You need to know how you're going to divide up those minutes. You need to. You know you can't do everything. You need to know what's important to you. Now I'm you know I've admitted recently, like on some of the podcasts I've been doing you know I don't do a lot of static stretching. I don't do a lot of pushups and squats and endurance running. Now we do some of that and there are some weeks where I'll take okay, I'll take these two weeks and teach push-ups, proper push-ups or squats, or we're going to make this an endurance.

Speaker 1: 17:30

We used to do what's called mile Monday. That would be the warmup. Actually that'd be the most of the day they do. It was five laps around the track and the bus ramp is a mile, and then they go, you know, have some free time. However, we also do fun Friday where they get free time. So then it was like it was too much free time, I guess, and not enough. You know, station, station days, I guess so, but you know I I was thinking of doing a month of that, just a month of mile Monday. So every class would probably get it twice because they kind of go. It's kind of like even days, odd days.

Speaker 1: 18:05

So I guess what you have to do is figure out what's important to you and what's based on the standards as well. What standards? Actually, speaking of standards, what standards are you going to follow? Are you going to follow the state? Are you going to follow the shape standards? Where are your priorities?

Speaker 1: 18:20

You can't do everything, and that's kind of what I was getting at with the push-ups and sit-ups, and I didn't say sit-ups, but we're on cement. We can't do sit-ups. We can, but I don't want kids putting their heads on cement. So there's things that I am not as good at or I don't teach as much, but we do a lot of dances and I can't dance at all, by the way but we do a lot of dances. We do a lot of, uh, dynamic warmups, we do um, you know, questionings, uh, questioning, uh, during. You know we have time for that because I'm I'm, you know, not doing as much of the other things I was.

Speaker 1: 18:55

I tried at one point to do, like you know, at the very end of class, let's do a cool down, stretching and like yoga-ish stuff, but it just wasn't realistic because I have kids getting drinks, sometimes not this time of year, but there's times when it's, you know, 95 degrees out and the kids are dying. You know what I mean. They need to cool down and just kind of rest, and again, there's a lot going on. I have, you know, a hundred kids trying to get drinks and things. It just it wasn't working, and so you know, you have to figure out what's important to you and how you want to structure that.

Speaker 1: 19:28

I say the last thing is you know what topics or standards do you want to cover and how do you want to cover them? I guess. Do you want to do it by seasons? You want to say, okay, I'm doing soccer and football in the fall, and then I want to do hockey and basketball in the winter, and then golf and baseball, kickball in the spring. Or do you want to do like TGFU, which is Teaching Games for Understanding, or there's another. I guess there's more ways than that. That's my opinion, though TGFU is definitely the way to go. That's a whole other topic. I'm not going to get into that now. But you know, decide on how you want to approach your classes and your overall you know vision for the program. So that is number four. It's a mission or maybe even a vision statement.

Speaker 1: 20:19

All right, the last one, number five, is a fun learning environment, and I've seen this debated before, like should PE be fun or should it be about learning? And you know obviously the answer is both. You should be learning, obviously, while you're teaching PE, but it should be fun, because if we're just having fun, then what are we doing? I mean, we're just. If we're just having fun and we're not learning, then we're just a recess teacher basically. So the learning has to be involved with the fun. But if I'm leaning one way or the other. It's definitely fun.

Speaker 1: 20:54

My students are not going to remember I've said this. I feel like I say this all the time. My students are not going to remember if I taught them about the chambers of the heart and I want them to learn the chambers of the heart, don't get me wrong but they're not going to remember that. They'll remember the fun they had, the experience. I would say, create experiences, that's what they're going to remember. I mean, experiences are things the kids are going to remember down the road and I still see some of my former students in high school, or they're older, that remember some of these things and I'll go over a few things right here that we've had that again, I'm not taking all credit for this there's other people involved but these are some of the experiences we've created for the kids and I just think this is the most amazing thing for them and the things they're going to remember the rest of their lives.

Speaker 1: 21:41

So the first thing is a bike or scooter trailer. Now, I'm not saying everybody can get that, but we had a grant. Is it our district or the state grant? I'm not sure, but either way, we had a grant where I took a one-day course to teach this day course, to teach this, and they would drop off a trailer at our PE field or right near our bus ramp and there were just a bunch of bikes and scooters in there. So for a couple, for two weeks, we'd have it and the students would ride around. Some of them would learn to ride a bike during that time. We'd set up an obstacle course and then, you know, they would have stop signs and they'd have to. You know, look left, right, left, as they come to a crosswalk. They'd have to signal with their arms, but they wore helmets, although that was a whole nother thing. They had to wear hairnets and stuff. It was kind of a mess, but that was the only thing that was. It was before COVID too. So then they got to go around on our big bus ramp and do laps and it was amazing. I mean, you're doing biking during PE, it's awesome.

Speaker 1: 22:54

So we also and we just finished martial arts for our second graders we have a martial arts studio. Come in and they teach it for two days a week, for six to eight weeks. They teach different skills and values. They also teach and nobody is touching anybody. I make that clear to the parents. They're not hitting anybody. They're not just doing blocks in the air and punches and kicks in the air and they receive a white ball. At the end they break a board. It's really cool at the end.

Speaker 1: 23:18

I've posted some of this if you want to check it out. We've also done. I know I talk about this a lot, but my fifth grade sports ed shoot ball tournament. The kids love it. They. I talk about this a lot, but my fifth grade sports ed shootball tournament. The kids love it. They still talk about it years later when I see them and even if they didn't win, they had jobs and they took them seriously and they had fun and it's all inclusive and it's just great. Another thing I'd say is, if you have the means and you could find some grant foundations or places you can write grants, definitely do that.

Speaker 1: 23:49

Bring in some cool new equipment. I brought in the Rally Yard Obstacle course to both my schools I'm the only one in the district that has these and brain balls. We've had funky cones that light up. That went out of business, by the way, and it just stopped working, but it was really cool at the time. Panometers, heart rate monitors, all sorts of things Bring those to your students. Bring special equipment to your students that nobody else has. I'm telling you, nobody else has the Raleigh-Ardobskill course in my district. So my students are the only ones that can say that they participate in this and they've had fun with it and they've done exercises and all sorts of stuff on it. They've done exercises and all sorts of stuff on it. They've done cup stacking on top of it and things like that. So this year I'm receiving an inflatable gaga ball pit just by writing a grant. So the grants are out there. Use them to bring the fun, bring the joy, bring the experiences.

Speaker 1: 24:40

The final thing I say well, actually two more things. One is special guests. So I had the Red Sox come in, a couple of players. One of them was Jackie Bradley Jr. He's a former gold glove winner and World Series champ. He came in. He was super nice, by the way. He was just so nice to the kids and to me and to all the adults and teachers and he was just so kind and he played with the kids and he was even on the MLB network. I saw this. They took video of him like dunking on our there was only eight rims, but dunking a basketball and stuff like that, which is pretty cool, and you know they come and speak to the kids. We had Dustin Padroia at our school, hopefully a hall of famer there. We had Dustin Padroia at our school hopefully a Hall of Famer. He's actually on the ballot this year.

Speaker 1: 25:30

We have local baseball and hockey teams. I actually work at the hockey arena, so we've had them come in as well as the mascots come in. We've had the local colleges come in and do some performances and also run some stations, like the girls' softball team came in from the college, they ran stations and then we had the guys as well college that came in and helped the kids and ran stations. It was really, really cool. The one thing I will say there's only one real local baseball team. They switched their name, so they switched their mascot, but back in the day they had it was like it looked like a tree basically, and I think it was called. I don't know what it was called. So, going back to the bike trailer, he rode the bike. I have a video of basically a bike the tree riding a bike. It was just awesome. So special guests are incredible and they talk to the kids. The kids are engaged with them. We also had a semi-pro football team come in and they ran stations with them as well. It's great having that extra. If you have time, email, make phone calls and bring in some special guests, and I'll say the last thing is mascots.

Speaker 1: 26:48

I think a lot of you have seen me post Webster. He is definitely a fan favorite. So a quick story is my former para and still good friend Seth brought him to a sports camp we were running in my neighborhood and he just had the Webster. If you haven't seen him, he's a red wacky, waving inflatable. In this case he's a pool float and he's hard to find. By the way, he brought him to our sports camp and I'm like, oh, we got to bring him to PE. So we used to do and we still do funny skits with him. He'll pretend to like, juggle a hula hoop, go on the obstacle course. He'll lead some dances. The kindergartners love him. I have him speak. He speaks to our younger kids that's a whole other story, I guess and he gives out Webster beads to our students of the week. Like I said, kind of like the older kids spin the wheel, he gives out Webster beads. So just bring that fun.

Speaker 1: 27:48

The kids love these things and, yes, you want to bring learning, obviously, and questioning and higher level thinking, of course, and skills, but bring the fun. And that is number five. And now it's time for your cowbell tip of the day. All right, everybody. So tip of the day is to implement these five things and make sure you have them. I think most of you probably do, or a lot of you do, but make sure you have these five things and make sure you have them. I think most of you probably do, or a lot of you do. Make sure you have these five things incorporated into your PE program.

Speaker 1: 28:35

And, by the way, I'd love to hear more from you if you want to reach out to me as to more things you think are important, because there's lots of things. These are my top five, I think, and I just hope that you are again implementing these. And if you feel like, hey, you know what, just hope that you are again implementing these. And if you feel like, hey, you know what I need to bring more fun or my reward system is not where it needs to be. And actually, number four, the mission statement. Again, it doesn't have to be written on your wall. It doesn't have to be Jerry Maguire, handing them out at 5 in the morning to teach you know, knowing where you're going with your program and knowing what you stand for is so important. So please, you know, look at these, review these, make sure you have them. If you have any questions you want to add to them, I'd love to hear it. I would love to hear how you're doing your reward system. I'd love to hear how you are, you know, implementing the fun or any of these things we talked about, and that is your cowbell tip of the day.

Speaker 1: 29:42

Thank you, everybody for tuning in. I really do appreciate it, as always. Go to supersizezfizedcom for more information and please join me in my Substack adventure. Again. I just I want to keep emphasizing that I'm on Substack more than I'm on Twitter, I think these days I just really enjoy it. It's a community of people on there. Unfortunately, not enough PE teachers yet, so I'm trying to work on that by telling you about it. So please join my Substack newsletter. It's free, and I'm just posting different articles along with this article that I just talked about. It's an article on these five things I talked about today, as well as some other things, and even old podcasts are in the archive there. So definitely check out the Substack. If I have to give you one call to action, check it out. Click on the link for Substack and you'll get the updates as we go. And yeah, take care, pe Nation, have a great day, week, weekend, whenever you listen to this, and let's keep pushing our profession forward. Thank you.