High School Physical Education teachers around the country have been challenged with keeping students active and engaged at home during remote learning. One teacher has quite hilariously been documenting his experience on TikTok and has used it to engage his students in class. Did we mention also he has millions of views and over 200k followers?
Remote Learning Challenges
Christian Trotter, Health and Physical Education teacher at Southeast High School in Kansas, has been teaching remotely since the start of the school year and sees his Health and PE classes every day, five days a week, for 80 minutes.
“The biggest challenges we face are technology issues and students inevitably not doing their work,” said Coach Trotter. “They have no adults present to force them to take accountability for their grades, so we kind of expected this.”
Teachers of TikTok
In an effort to connect with his students beyond the classroom and document these crazy times he started posting videos on TikTok, a video-sharing social network platform popular with kids and young adults around the country.
“It all started when I just wanted to show my wife how goofy I looked doing dynamic stretching all by myself in a giant gym,” said Trotter. “Now, sometimes I set my phone up on my desk and record myself because sometimes my students or I say some pretty funny stuff.”
Trotter has shared a variety of remote PE lessons and conversations that have come up in his classes. He has also shared videos of him demonstrating trick shots and challenging his students with an activity if they’re successful.
“They seem to think it’s pretty cool that their teacher has 220,000 followers on the app they like to take ownership of,” said Trotter. “I have students asking me to put them on my TikTok all the time. I’ve even had parents ask me to put their kids on there.”
Student Video Challenges
One of his more recent viral videos featured a few of his students. He challenged them to re-create an Olympic sport at home, and they did not disappoint!
“I had no idea some of them would take it so serious and create such hilarious, awesome videos,” said Trotter. “I just had to ask them and their parents if I could share them on my account and about 4 million views later…here we are.”
Here are two submissions that his students created at home. You can view more of the submission by following Coach Trotter on TikTok (@thetrotterlife). TikTok is available to be downloaded on any mobile or tablet device.
Best Advice for Remote Learning
During these stressful times, Trotter’s best advice is to try and make the best of the situation you’re given. “Be innovative, try new things and do things you think would be fun,” said Trotter. “This is a crazy time for everyone around the entire world. We will always look back at these times. We might as well make the most of it, and make these memories positive and fun!”
