This summer I hope you made time to wind down, get out and play and rethink your teaching strategies. As a cog in the wheel, there's not much you can do about improving building policy other than express yourself coherently when issues need addressing. So, if you need to criticize, make sure you have an understanding of the problem, can express it and can suggest at least one solution. Fortunately, with the distance summer provides, problem solving is often easier. At one time the following questions challenged me:

• How do we meaningfully address the students who prefer to sit out?
• Should we change the dress code?
• How can we avoid complaints that result from one teacher applying departmental guidelines while the other teachers don't?
• How can we avoid locker room problems?
• Should we introduce new programs? If yes, why?
• What new programs can we introduce?
• How can we react constructively to the trends of the day?
• Can we unify our response to poor sportsmanship, bad language, and bullying?
• Is there a way to promote positive leadership that hasn't been addressed yet?

My solution was to draw up a contract, that I could distribute the first day of school. Included were my expectations for attendance, preparation, participation, and excuses - medical or parental. I also included my grading policy.

You also might want to think about the kids' issues and ways you can help them. These were my kids' issues:

• They hated having so little time to dress.
• They liked to learn, but they also wanted to have fun.
• They didn't like feeling belittled or intimidated by their classmates.
• They liked to do more than play games and compete.
• They wanted a sense of self worth.
• They wanted to feel important to classmates and their teacher.
• They wanted to have access to equipment the minute they came to class.

Don't underestimate the need to begin with good organization.

• Locker room organization and safety count! Kids need to lock their things securely and need help when they forget combinations or put their locks on a wrong locker. Keep a good filing system, one for their name, one for the serial number on their lock and one for the locker and keep them in class sets until you are able to file them. Make sure the kids fill them out properly and that they also record the information in something they are likely to have with them daily. (Memo pad, etc.)
• Set up a central Lost and Found.
• Collect action pictures for your bulletin boards and rotate what is on the bulletin board so it is in synch with your unit.

Think about your responses to the typical negative things kids do and try to come up with a unique way to turn those things around. Some hints that are different than the usual - detention, calling home, taking laps, doing extra exercise, or simply throwing kids out of class:

• Try using praise when you are not angry, then build on that relationship.
• Admit to needing help and put a difficult kid in charge of something.
• Conspire with their parents to withhold Xmas presents if they don't turn around.
• Stop the problem by removing the student who is at fault but only until he or she apologizes to you and the class.
• Have the student write a report on what they should have done.
• Ask your colleagues for successful ploys they used to change bad situations and use them yourself.

Don't try to change everything! Just try one or two new ideas this year - and let me know how you do. Have a great school year.

Isobel Kleinman
Secondary Section Editor

Dr. Andrew J. Haig (5/28/03 NYTimes) claims that the weight of student backpacks does not contribute to the rise in complaints of back pain because they simply do not wear them that much and cover little ground when they do. His research found that 3rd graders carry loads averaging 5.7% of their body weight and older children 11.4% of theirs, but that there was no correlation between the weight of their bags and the increase in their pain. He noted that complaints increase with age, but suggested that it is more about their being more obese and not walking to school then wearing heavy backpacks."

In reading this article, I wondered if he studied the impact of kids wearing backpacks off one shoulder. Many students do. Since back pain is a problem, physical educators would do a good deed taking some time to teach the mechanics of taking weight evenly. This can be done during gymnastics, a dance class focusing on lifts or during a wrestling unit and will fit right in. If none of those units are in your program, you might try to put aside some time for this lesson.

PICKLEBALL

Very little is written about pickleball, but there is a well developed unit plan for pickleball in Complete Physical Education Plans for Grades 7-12 (available at www.humankinetic.com) to help you along. The advantages of this activity are:

• The equipment is cheap and sturdy and adaptable for indoor or outdoor play.
• Students can enjoy it at any level because the short racket and light plastic ball enables them to learn the forehand and backhand without much difficulty. With those two strokes, they can have playing success immediately.
• Two pickleball courts fit into one tennis court. One pickleball court fits in a volleyball or badminton court.
• The wooden paddle is air resistant, so students have to learn proper strokes, strokes that are transferable easily to tennis.
• MY KIDS LOVED IT!!!!!

SPEEDBALL

Here is a game that uses many of the skills students learned in a variety of other sports - and uses them differently.

Think about challenging your kids to adapt to something a new. Such a challenge might change the student who dominates games in class.

AEROBIC-DANCE ROUTINES TO HIT SONGS

There is absolutely nothing that gets girls moving like good music. Even the most boring routine (try not to make it boring) will keep their activity level up. Of course, you the teacher will be hearing it all day, so take the summer to pick up some tunes that you really like and devise two to four sixteen beat movement patterns that you can synchronize with the song. Practice it so you feel comfortable doing it to music and won't be embarrassed modeling it and develop cue words for teaching it to your kids.

CHANGE YOUR WARM-UPS

Find a way to teach movement patterns that you want your kids to master and have them do them as a warm-up. I call the exercise of moving through a sports motion while not playing the sport a mimetic. Having kids practice what their body does when it doesn't have a racquet or ball to worry about is a great way to teach kids good habits. You can start with the motion, making sure kids move through the preparation, contact point and follow-through. Practice it ten times, daily. Add the footwork, and then add some jumps, or a turn and jump, or slides . . . whatever they would have to do to get to the ball or be productive in a real game.
There is no end to the things you can teach using mimetics. Use them as a warm-up and I guarantee, you will you see skills progress!

Add music to your warm-up routine.