New School Year, Exciting New Plans

After much contemplation I have found a major for my masters degree that I am very excited for: Curriculum design and instructional planning. I am anticipating this program for a number of reasons. First, I am very interested in technology in education and have experimented with different mediums in class. I can't wait to learn more about different technologies and how they can be implemented into my curriculum. Also, I am anticipating the opportunity to have input into overall curriculum design and am eager to learn more about their development.

I have done a lot of work on my webpage this past week... hope you enjoy!

Web Page Changes

I am including health education in my physical education web page as well. As I have written, I am now finishing up my health education certification. I am excited to incorporate this subject area on my website. I am still deciding how the site will look and what I will incorporate, but I think that putting all the information on one site is the best option. Hopefully the site has enough room for all my information, I have already used half of the space!

I am also excited about subbing. Lately I have been working in health and physical education and been loving it. I am so happy that I enjoy it so much and am super passionate about the subject. Next step... full-time job!

I am currently taking classes for my health certification. I am taking a class on elementary health education, disease prevention and healthy lifestyles, and chronic and communicable diseases. While reading today, I came across the website bam.gov, which is also on my website. I thought that it was a great site before taking these classes, but now see just how valuable it is for children. Not only does it talk about physical activity, but it also discusses safety, being healthy, eating well, and mental health. It is a great site and if you haven't already seen it, check it out.

Great Book on the Beneficial Effects of Exercise

I am reading a great book on exercise and the effects it has on the body and mind called Spark, by John Ratey. The beginning chapters are discussing the effects of exercise on students in the morning before classes begin in a program called "Zero Hour PE". I will certainly add more as I go on in the book, but so far the PE in the morning is really benefitting the students throughout the day!

Linking the blog and webpage...

Today I decided to link my PE blog to my webpage. I am excited to share more about physical education, the web design process, and interesting new things I am discovering.

Teaching Experience

This past weekend, I taught my first gymnastics lessons at the local YWCA. I found this to be a good opportunity for me to put all my previous instruction into practice and planned with lesson plans and the resources I have been provided with. Overall the lessons went well and I was very happy to have made the lesson plans. With out them I think I would have had a much tougher time. Management of the classes went fairly well, however, I am working on keeping students where they need to be. This weekend I am excited to know the students, be more familiar with ability levels, and to implement the lesson plans that better reflect their ability levels.
Teaching definately is a reflective experience and I feel much more prepared having adjusted and adapted lessons to the students personal abilities.

Intramural Sports

This semester, I was the captain of my intramural soccer team here at Cortland. When taking up the role I had no idea how much work went into it or the leadership it included. As captain the preparation (even for intramurals) went far beyond what I expected. My first task was discussing the availability of games for the season, and when everyone was free. At the beginning of the season I also had to help prepare my team by scheduling a meeting to coordinate uniforms, numbers, and names. After this I went to order the uniforms, pay for them after collecting everyone's money, and finally pick-up and distribute them. Making sure everyone was prepared was important because if we were ill-prepared we were not allowed to play. Before the first game, I realized I had to find a way to communicate with all the players to let them know we had a game. In previous years, previous captains had utilized a facebook group to notify of upcoming games. As an infrequent facebooker, I found it hard to keep up with checking and usually found out hours before the game from others on the team. As a result I decided that since everyone had a phone I would text message to make sure everyone could be there and decide whether or not we needed to cancel. The text message method worked out great and I knew every game how many people and who exactly would be attending the game.

Throughout the season we played 10 fifty games and competed in the championship final game. The games themselves were an absolute blast and every game I found myself providing teammates with feedback and providing motivation whenever it was needed. Making sure everyone played and participated was also important to the game, and as much as we all wanted to play the entire game, there came a time to sub out. After every game, we brought the younger girls home who did not have their car with them. Although we wound up losing the final game the season was great and it taught me a lot about preparation and motivation.