Episode Transcript:
Happy new year to everybody and here’s to a healthy and happy 2020!
As I hear me say 2020 it makes me not only reflect on 2019 but to look ahead as what’s to come in 2020 and when I hear myself say 2020, I can’t help thinking about like 2020 vision. I want to use this 2020 vision concept to really take a closer look at what went well in 2019 what didn’t go so well and begin to start thinking about the spring semester. I really want to make spring even better than the fall because I think as teachers we can always improve on what we do to make the experience for kids even better. Some of the areas I like to take a closer look at when reflecting back to 2019 or the fall semester as compared to the spring is, how did I do management? What are some things I can do to enhance and change up curriculum a little bit? How am I using equipment? How’s the faculty rapport? Is there things that we could be doing, you know, to get more cohesive? And then other things like record keeping and just kind of nuts and bolts of running a department.
The area that I’d like to take a little bit closer look at today is the area of curriculum design. I think my management is usually pretty good by second semester, most of my students take the course again. I’ll have a few new students, but most of them are returning so they understand where I’m going with management, how I start and stop the class and what my expectations are. So we’re good there, but I really want to focus on curriculum and what I love to do after the fall semester is take a look at my data from the pedometers that I use. I use the uploadable pedometers and I take a look to see, you know, what their average activity time was, or average MVPA time based on the different activities that I did and it gives me an idea of what was effective, what wasn’t, what can I change, what can I do to increase those numbers to get them moving a little bit more? But not only that, I kind of take some notes throughout the fall and I jot down on my calendar of what activities the students really liked. You know, some are more fun than others, some are harder than others, some were maybe too tough physically for them so I had to back down a little bit. So I’m going to take these notes that I took. I’m going to take a look at the pedometer data and then that’s really when I start designing the curriculum for the spring. Because ultimately all I really want from these kiddos is that they have positive results. They enjoyed themselves. They are getting the benefits of exercise, they’re moving, they’re losing a little bit of weight, they’re increasing their activity time numbers and their MVPA numbers and that it is overall, like I said, a positive experience.
So what can I do as a teacher to improve what I did in the fall to make it better in the spring. So those are just a couple thoughts, a couple ideas to look at. To be honest with you, I’m going to use the rest of this week to take a look at those things. I haven’t done it yet, but I could tell you right now there is some activities that were too hard. I’m gonna make a little easier. There’s some activities that I know I could add more equipment, be creative on the design, on how they’re moving around the gym or outside. I can take a look at the data to see you know, typically where I can improve. I know first hour seems to get gypped a little bit on activity time because that’s what I’m coming in and setting up and I don’t think that’s fair to my first hour, that they’re not getting the same activity time or MVPA time as my other hours. Same with my last hour. They get gypped because they help clean up the equipment. So I need to be better about that. So those are just a couple ideas. I hope this was helpful, but again, use that 2020 vision to improve 2020 and hope you have a great remainder of the school year. Take care everyone and happy new year.
