NYS AHPERD 72nd Annual Conference

On November 20th, Cortland APEM, along with other Cortland teachers, attended the 72nd Annual NYS AHPERD Conference. The conference was a great way to network with former Cortland Alum and also with teachers from my area and talk to them about future positions. I went to four sessions but the one that stood out the most to me was Chris Wert's presentation on Kid Approved Games. This session was about many different kinds of games for kids in the elementary level. Chris really knew what he was talking about and it gave me a lot of hope in being able to make a change in the physical education world because Chris was a young guy and it showed that age doesn't matter in making a difference in the physical education world. On Thursday night, I actually got to meet Chris as I was on his South Central Zone team for Battle of the Zones. We almost made a come back in the game but ultimately came in second place. On Friday we ended the day at the Jay B. Nash Awards dinner, and the food was great. Seeing all the people there who love P.E. and want to make a difference in that area made me have so much more appreciation for what I want to do because it shows a lot of people want to help change and shape the world into a healthier life style. My Friday night ended with a three and a half hour ride home, which was only supposed to be an hour or so. Never listen to backseat drivers, they always make you take the wrong turn!

Slippery Rock University's Adaptive Physical Activity Awareness Day

On Wednesday November 11th, 2009, I went with some members of APEM to Slippery Rock University for their annual Adaptive Physical Activity Awareness Day. The drive there from Cortland is about 5 hours but it wasn't such a bad drive, since I wasn't the one driving. Once we were there we almost immediately started participating in the activities. The first one we did was Beep Baseball, here's a snap shot from that:
That game was really fun, although I had a very hard time hitting the ball with a full swing, so I had to result to bunting. The next activity we participated in was Wheelchair Shot Put. Brandon Herwick decided to challenge me, not knowing I used to throw shot put here at SUNY Cortland. His first throw from the wheelchair went about 35 feet. My first throw went about 45. He challenged me to a rematch and he got his second throw to go 40 feet. My second throw beat him yet again, going more than 50 feet. Our next activity was Blindfold Javelin, which was played with blindfolds and foam javelins. I won't talk about this activity because, although it was fun, I did not do so well seeing as I was beat by 2 girls, oh no! The rest of the day went smoothly as we were taken on a tour of the campus and got to see the barn where they hold their therapeutic recreation classes. In the barn they had about 10 different horses, and they were all beautiful. Later on we discussed the Master's program they offer at Slippery Rock and it sounds very intriguing. After that, we went to eat in their dining hall which was, sorry Neubig I still love you, absolutely amazing. We finished off the day with meeting some of the guys from Murderball. They are extremely intense and watching them play was great. We left Slippery Rock around 8:30 pm and got back to Cortland at 1:45 am. The experience I had at Slippery Rock was unforgettable and I cannot wait to go next year!

Let's Dance!

For my International Lab C, I decided to teach some Dance, Dance, Revolution, which was created in Japan in 1998. I was very prepared for this lesson because of all the help I have gotten and all the learning I have done so far this semester. This was the first lesson that I had to write a lesson plan for and I think it helped me do this activity a lot. I was given 20 minutes to do this activity but looking at my videos and time coding sheet I see I only used about 18 minutes of that time. I should be able to extend activities more next time so I can use up all of the time allotted. To add time effectively, I can add more activities from my activity progression sheet that can engage the students in a little bit more tougher tasks. I feel as though my changes in activities during my lesson will impact student learning by keeping the students interested in playing DDR and maybe the students will enjoy fitness so much that they will continue after class in their own way. During my time teaching, I used more than 50% of my time for activity and less than 15% of my time for management, which is great for teaching. However, I used more than 30% of my time for instruction. To be more effective and have more time for activity, I should have less than 30% of instruction time. In my feedback sheet, it shows that I gave feedback to 7 people out of 19 but I also was able to give general feedback to others however I was not able to hear it in the video. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this lesson. It was very exciting and fun and I will take what I learned from this lesson and make my Lab D lesson much better.

Outside Teaching!

For my third teaching experience we all went outside for some ultimate frisbee. I was a bit nervous during my few minutes of teaching, as you can hear in my voice in my audio. However, even though I was just as nervous as I was in my other teaching experiences, I was also more confident because I was able to use some teaching methods I did not learn before my other two teaching segments. After reviewing my audio, my biggest weakness was that I kept referring to all the students as "guys". This is unacceptable in a classroom because there will be both girls and boys and I must use a universal term for both genders, for example, "children, students, everyone." I gave more feedback than I did in my last teaching experience but I was unable to point out in my audio which person I gave feedback to other than Mike. Overall, I feel as though I did a much better job in this teaching experience than I have in my other ones.

Second Teaching Experience

First Day of Class Teaching Experience