physical education class

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Why Physical Fitness Class Is Better Than Club/Membership Involvement for Students

As a future physical educator, I’ve learned the very importance of physical education while studying for my degree, but even more so with the involvement with my students. The truth of the matter is physical education class is vital to any student’s success in the future. In the early grades we go over key motor skill and development tasks. As we progress through the grades, we target other more in depth skills, such as strategy and cooperative games, that incorporate these fundamental motor skills. This directly can be associated with our National Association of Sport and Physical Education standards, but more importantly teach students how to participate in a variety of skills. Other than these tasks, we also are able to associate physical fitness with fun and positive experiences, by offering our students a chance to expand in their imagination and creativity. These are also vital skills that teach students to come up with their own ideas and to adapt to different environments, as they will need to do these tasks on a daily basis. The physical education class is the only place that can allow such a dramatic and dynamic learning atmosphere.

The main reason clubs and other various programs do not and will not ever be able to fulfill the skills learned in our physical education class is because they are all based of specificity training. Specificity training is when clubs, memberships, etc. train children and adolescence to be particular good at one skill. For example, swimming memberships specifically would train students to only be proficient in in-water activities. However, it is common knowledge that a majority of physical fitness happens outside the water rather than in it. While I find the program to be of great value for those who want to go on to swim competitively, it does not teach the motor skills needed to even participate in swimming.

Let’s say you were a student who joined the swim team in your area because your physical education class was terminated at the beginning of the year. Now that your program is cut, you need to attend swim practice after school three times a week for one hour. This means that homework along with dinner will have to wait or be rescheduled for a different time. You are also swimming around 20-50 laps during practice and learning the max of the four strokes available to swimmers. Now imagine that your physical education class was not terminated and is scheduled twice a week during your school day. After a given subject classes you go the gymnasium to find out this week and next you will be touching on your basketball skills with an instant activity and a scooter basketball tournament. The following two weeks your will be playing racket ball with again an instant activity, as well as, a mini round robin tournament. This example shows how there are multiple of other factors that go into students needing to attend an outside activity rather than a physical education class; for example, after school time taken away from valuable homework time and the fact that being involved in only one activity stiffens a student’s skills and imagination. Also, it is imperative that as physical educator’s we place emphasis on not only team sports, but also individual sports. Even back yard games such as Can Jam and Horse Shoes are games played at family and community events. If we do not teach these basic games to our students who will? Put yourself in our student’s shoes with this example and examine which is truly better for accomplishing both these goals. The answer is physical education.

It is our duty as a physical education program to teach these skills to our students and associate them with positive memories. This will in turn allow students to be excited about physical fitness and be much more successful in the helping them continue to participate in physical fitness throughout their life. This is goal of not just the physical education class but expands throughout our community. As fitness is one of the essentials of life, it is one that is necessary to promote in our communities in a way that has value and success. The physical education classroom is our answer.

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Five Ways to Motivate Students in Physical Education Class

There is no shortcut to becoming a master physical education teacher. In order to keep yourself motivated as a teacher you need to motive your students by constantly challenging them and encouraging them to reach their physical goals. A physical education teacher must perform their own professional development to stay current with the times and learn new techniques to motive their students. The five tips below are simple, yet many physical education teachers do not stress on a daily basis.

1. Be Willing to Gain More Knowledge: As a physical education teacher you to be interested in learning about new activities and games, plus incorporates them into their lesson plans. A teacher that is never satisfied with gaining knowledge is a good teacher. As a physical education teacher you should never be satisfied with teaching the same skills over and over again, year after year. You should research and find new games to bring into your class. By bringing in new games it will not only broaden students knowledge of new skills, but they will also have fun learning new and different skills.

2. Be Encouraging: This enables students to help increase confidence and decrease doubt and failure. This is important because as a teacher you should want to build up your students confidence. When you encourage your student and tell them that they did a great job in performing a certain skill, it will motivate the child and help build their confidence and improve their overall self-esteem. The opposite is criticizing a student. By doing this you are destroying a students confidence. If you tell a child they did a horrible job performing a skill, not only will destroy the students self-esteem but you will also decrease their willingness to participate in your gym class. And that should not be the goal of any physical education teacher.

3. Be Passionate About Teaching: It is important to be passionate about what you teach. If you are not passionate and giving it your all, the students will pick up on that. It is important that your students can see how passionate you are about physical education, and in return they can become passionate as well and want to live a active and healthy life.

4. Stay Organized: Being organized is an extremely important skill for a teacher to have. If you are going to teach a lesson on the volleyball set, it is important to have an organized introduction, fitness activity, and at least three setting activities thought out and planned out ahead of time so that the class runs smoothly and effectively.

5. Keep an Emphasis on Safety: The safety of your students is one of, if not the most important thing you can emphasize. A physical education teacher always needs to be focused on injury control. You want your students to have fun, but you also want them to have fun in a safe and orderly environment. It is important that you establish safety guidelines to your students, and they are aware of the consequences if they do not follow those rules.

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Physical Education Classes More Than Just Gym

If you didn’t like playing dodge ball – well, you’re probably not alone in that thought. But physical education class offers many valuable lessons for students that last their entire lifetimes. Physical education class is more than just gym class.

It teaches physical coordination. Students learn about balance and grace. Elementary school children can develop large and fine motor skills in PE or recess. Adolescents going through puberty go through a typically awkward stage of development. Physical education class often offers them the ability to learn how to walk with their bodies truly in balance. They learn excellent posture and how to keep themselves in good condition.

Physical Education class teaches how to stay physically fit. Do you remember those warm-up exercises we all did, and those cool-down exercises? The laps around the gym or the field we all ran? Those all taught us that the body does not go from zero to sixty in one straight motion. Every exercise works much better if you warm the body up first and do some type of cool down exercises. Stretching your body is also very good for the muscles.

It teaches that exercise is fun. Some classes today play Ultimate Frisbee or learn karate. Other classes have even played Dance Dance Revolution, the popular PlayStation video game. Physical education teachers today are creative and thinking totally outside-the-box to find fun activities. They are offering exercise alternatives that students will want to do outside of their school time, and perhaps for the rest of their life.

PE class teaches how to lead a healthy life. Many physical education classes include nutrition and health subjects. They teach basic information about nutrition and the body and what growing bodies need. While our parents are meant to provide health and nutrition information, sometimes children do not listen to their parents but they will listen to another authority figure. Having a gym teacher that you like and respect tells you that it is important to drink your milk everyday is entirely different from having your mother do it.

Some schools include units on the dangers of drugs and alcohol in their PE classes. In today’s world children need to be educated about the harmful effects of drugs and alcohol and they need to be educated quickly. Drugs have appeared as young and as early as grade school in some communities. Having children understand that drugs and alcohol are not a “quick thrill” but something that can cause serious harm is a very valuable lesson. Preventing children from trying drugs and alcohol through education can be as valuable as everything else they learn in physical education, if not the most valuable thing they learn today.

In conclusion, Physical Education classes are still important for today’s schools in providing a well rounded education for children. They help get children into the habit of exercise and healthy habits while they are young. Children may discover a sport or activity in elementary school PE class that they later pursue as an extra curricular activity in Junior High or High School. Students of any grade may discover an activity that they can even enjoy for a lifetime. Finally, PE is a great way for kids to just be kids and have some fun.

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