PELINKS4U - Promoting Active & Healthy Lifestyles

Happy Holidays from pelinks4u

pelinks4u staff, editors, and contributors wish you health and happiness this holiday season. This month we feature SEVEN new articles including suggestions for holiday inspired physical activities and ways to help you preserve your regular physical activity habits. Be sure too to check out the review of a new book Change Your Body, Change the World by Exuberant Animal creator, Frank Forencich.

Finally, I'm happy to report that we now have more than 600 visionary statements about physical education posted at the PE2020 web site. If you haven't yet contributed, help create a road map into the future by collaborating in the drafting of a visionary blueprint. And if you can, join us at the PE2020 Forum at the AAHPERD Convention in San Diego, March 29th.

From the Publisher…

Why Builders Don't Design Houses and Physical Educators Should Not Create Lesson Plans

A friend of mine, named Dave, is a custom homebuilder. He buys house plans, or customers bring him architect-designed blueprints. These plans get him started and guide him through the project. Frequently he has to make modifications. Problems arise during construction that the architect did not anticipate. Locations and materials often create specific construction challenges. As an experienced builder Dave has become skilled at adapting house plans. Sometimes it's frustrating, but Dave has no desire to go into home design. He understands it requires a skill set he neither possesses nor wants to learn.

Dave's employees work closely alongside him. Few of them bring much prior experience. He mostly looks for a good work ethic and a desire to learn. He starts them out with straightforward tasks he's confident they can do without messing up. Gradually he has them do more, giving careful instruction along the way. He knows that if they make mistakes it will not only cost him time and money but also affect his reputation and the quality of the homes he builds. Over time, his employees become skilled enough to do more, and progressively become competent builders.

This story leads me to puzzle why we expect physical education teachers - and especially novices - to create lesson plans. Most physical educators neither have the skills nor motivation. People who choose to teach physical education do so for good reasons. It's not that they are incapable of writing or planning, but for most that's not their first love. Physical educators like to be around kids. They like to move and share their love of physical activity. Many want to coach. They are typically excellent communicators and motivators. And they neither like nor are any good at lesson planning.

Arne Duncan, Education Secretary, suggested some time ago that teacher preparation required revolution rather than revision. This month, a Blue Ribbon Panel to improve student learning echoed this thought. It urged teacher-training programs to operate more like medical schools that rely heavily on clinical experience.

For nurses and doctors the day following graduation is no different than the days and months before. Their entire professional preparation is spent splitting hours between the hospital and classroom. During training they don't create procedures and practices, but follow instructions. Similar to the military, they are drilled in professional practice. They learn on the shoulders of those experienced to know what works. They are neither encouraged nor permitted to experiment with practices that risk negative consequences for others. The result is a consistency in behaviors that meet expected performance standards.

Contrast this with physical education teacher preparation. We take students unskilled in and not knowledgeable about the topic they are expected to teach, lacking instructional skills, novices at classroom management, and unmotivated writers. With all of these deficiencies we then devote countless hours to having them try to create quality lesson plans. Little surprise that both the plans and the teacher performance turns out disappointing.

After two years of minimal public school experience these novice teachers are assigned to student teaching, and not only expected to manage large groups of children but also to create detailed lesson plans. More often than not the result is another huge disappointment. Hardly surprising is the transition of these college graduates into the ranks of physical educators lacking effective instructional skills, and who will never create nor teach quality lesson plans.

What we currently do just doesn't make sense, and yet we continue doing it this way. Instead, why not simply put a well-designed lesson plan into the hands of novice teachers from the outset? Abandon the pursuit of good writers and let's focus on developing quality teachers. Forget the idea that new teachers will take time to create effective lesson plans. They simply don't have time even if they were motivated. Better to give them one of the key tools for success right from the outset.

Build a Shared Vision for Physical Education in the Year 2020 and Beyond

SHARE YOUR PE VISION HERE

Why don't we already do this? It's tempting to blame teacher educators. You know, those people-who-can't-teach-but-teach-teacher individuals. But I don't buy that idea for at least two reasons. Successful coaches rarely can perform the skills they expect from their athletes. Similarly, teaching people how to teach is not the same as teaching children. But more importantly national and state regulating agencies, school districts, and higher education institutions handicap what teacher educator can and can't do.

So, here's an idea for educational reformers: Adopt an evidence-based approach to teacher preparation. Develop criteria for what constitutes an effective teacher. Get rid of the handicapping regulations. Let faculty design and adapt programs in a way that they are confident will allow them to graduate high performing teachers, and also eliminate those individuals who should never become teachers. Given full control of their destiny, it would be fine to hold programs and faculty accountable for outcomes that they said they could achieve.

In this brave, new world, imagine the changes we'd see in teacher preparation and more importantly in the quality of teaching and student learning. Almost certainly, we'd quit wasting time having novice teachers try to create quality lesson plans.

Steve Jefferies, publisher
pelinks4u

1.	ELEMENTARY CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY STATIONS
2.	HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS AND STAYING HEALTHY
3.	DODGEBALL REVISITED
4.	A HOLIDAY ROUTE TO A HEALTHY 2011
5.	HEALTHY, ACTIVE MESSAGES: WHAT ARE WE TELLING OUR STUDENTS?
6.	EDUCATION CYCLE OF PE NEEDS A CHANGE: HOW TO USE TOOLS FOR A MORE PRODUCTIVE PE
7.	DUCHENNE MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY


	ELEMENTARY CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY STATIONS Amy Glen and Lance Bryant suggest that the holiday season is a perfect time for physical educators to incorporate holiday-themed physical activity sessions into their lessons. Five stations are fully explained together with the equipment needed to run them. The authors also encourage teachers to create a festive atmosphere with holiday music and selective gym decorations.
	HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS AND STAYING HEALTHY Debra D'Acquisto believes that holidays, festive foods, and keeping a healthy waistline CAN coexist together! Debra's article focuses on how to avoid gaining weight and keep physically active during the holiday season. Changes to your eating habits can easily add calories to your diet and quickly expand your waistline. Debra shares a wide range of tips for addressing the behavioral changes that inevitably accompany the holidays. She also presents two, easy-to-do-at-home, 10-exercise workout routines (with video links).
	DODGEBALL REVISITED Author John Strong reports on a game of dodgeball he recently participated in with his student majors. It was led by one of his students during a peer teaching experience. Even though most of the students reported enjoying the game, John informed them of NASPE’s disapproval of dodgeball. The students wondered “Why?” The fact is that dodgeball can be played quite vigorously and without elimination. But John encouraged his students to look deeper into what was being learned from the experience. He asked them to reflect upon how this type of activity might impact the classroom environment and how students might perceive physical education. John reminds us that during this holiday season we need to keep in mind “appropriate practices” when tempted to introduce “holiday games” into our curriculum.
	A HOLIDAY ROUTE TO A HEALTHY 2011 Isobel Kleinman believes that the first way to address unhealthy student eating and physical activity habits is to get students to regularly recognize the connection between food and activity. She suggests that if students have a better understanding of how their food choices affect their bodies it will encourage them think more about what they eat. Isobel shares a way she has used to get her students to document their eating and activity in the weeks leading up to the holidays. Her goal is to help students “break the chain of automatic bad behaviors.”
	HEALTHY, ACTIVE MESSAGES: WHAT ARE WE TELLING OUR STUDENTS? Clive Hickson and Brent Bradford remind us that physical educators are powerful role models to their young students. During class time, PE teachers try to motivate their students to be healthy through direct communication. From time-to-time, parents share the impact of these comments on their children. Usually these are positive but this is not guaranteed. Teachers also exert a powerful influence on their students through nonverbal, outside of class communication - specifically, through their behavior within the school environment. How teachers dress, what they eat and drink, how they recognize student effort in their classes, and the enjoyment they show from being physically active are just some of the ways teachers can unintentionally impact what students are learning from them.
	EDUCATION CYCLE OF PE NEEDS A CHANGE: HOW TO USE TOOLS FOR A MORE PRODUCTIVE PE After more than 30 years teaching physical education and coaching, Kim Nygaard was growing increasingly frustrated. She felt she needed to change what she was doing. More and more of her class time seemed to be spent dealing with behavioral issues which compromised the time she wanted to spend teaching skills. Learn how she changed. Kim now starts her new curriculum in January instead of September! She begins the school year with an emphasis on teaching character and discipline. Learn more about these and other changes Kim has made to her physical education program and the learning goals she now has for her students.
	DUCHENNE MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY DMD (Duchenne muscular dystrophy) affects as many as 1 in 3,500 male births worldwide and is characterized by a progressive weakening and wasting of the skeletal muscles that control movement. Although there is currently no cure to stop or reverse DMD there are treatments to minimize the effects of the disease and to preserve muscular strength. In this article, Jade Cognetti explains the causes of DMD and outlines the symptoms and diagnosis. She notes that for many reasons, different types of exercise can benefit individuals of all ages with DMD.


		December 2010 Vol. 12 No. 10