As one of my goals this school year is to reflect on my Physical Education program, my lessons, and everything that I have been changing to not only help my students learn more, but to help me to become a better teacher and a better person. Every year, I attend the Illinois AHPERD Convention to watch a lot of great demonstrations of activities and to try and catch some good lectures to help me become a better educator. Over the years, I sit on the side and take pages and pages of notes on the different sessions I have watched and when it is over and I go back to work the next week, I take those notes and put them in a binder. I have a binder filled with the past 10 years of activities that sit on my shelf and I will go through every once in a while to try and remember what I saw. Every so often, I would use something that I saw and do that activity with my students where it fits in.
Well, I figured this year, since I am already changing my Physical Education program, I am going to change my mindset on attending the IAHPERD Convention. In the sessions, the presenters always need volunteers to help demonstrate and at times, it seems like no one jumps up to help them out. There are lots of physical educators that just want to sit and take notes. This year, I am going to #BeTheChampion (our convention theme) and be one of those that jumps up right away to help the presenters. There was only one session that I sat down for, but the other 11 that I attended, I put my stuff down and was one of the first ones out on the floor. This year I was going to learn by doing. I was not going to sit and take notes, but instead, get up and move. I am a Physical Educator and I learn by doing! This year, I engaged in conversations with more people at the sessions than I have in the past. One of the main reasons in because of Twitter. The people that I have met on Twitter and had conversations with has been great for me this past year. I have learned so many great things from these conversations, but more importantly, so many great new friends to share ideas with and to not feel alone on my own “island”. I learned so much from these conversations that I had with them and hope that they will continue after these past 2 days. These conversations were spur of the moment and so much information is shared. It is a great way to learn directly from what others are doing in their program, but also what I am improving on in my own program. One of chats that I try to participate in on twitter is #iaherdchat with all of these great Illinois Physical Educators. Over the past year, I got to know them on a twitter level, but this year at the convention, I wanted to meet them face to face. I wanted to put a face to their twitter handle. One of the best ideas to help with this was brought up and was implemented by Carl Meister. He was going to create a shirt for himself and wear it at the convention with his twitter handle on it. He unselfishly offered out to those on twitter if anyone would like do the same. There was a good amount of responses of those who participate in the #iahperdchat that wanting to do the same. He got all of those interested in wearing the shirt and their twitter handles and took care of the ordering. The plan was to wear them and get people asking about the shirts and what they were. I had a dozen ask me where I could buy the shirt from and a dozen ask me what it was about. I gladly explained everything to help promote a bigger #iahperdchat and get more involved to share with others. I personally want to thank those that made my 2018 IAHPERD Convention the best one I have ever attended. I made so many new friends to share with, to help me in my journey this school year, and I hope to help them in anyway possible. They have spurred me to keep on working on my adjustments for this year and have encouraged me to step up in ways that I have never thought about before. They have been a great sounding board and I have learned a lot from them. They have inspired me to continue being a better Physical Educator for not only myself, but for my students. They unselfishly share their ideas and thoughts and I hope can do the same for them. So I want to say a HUGE Thank You to... Mike Graham Daniel Tennessen (USOPEN) Mark and Becky Foellmer Will Navis Jason Denk Roy Anderson Carl Meister Derrick Biehl Kelly Zerby Heather Isler Nik Broekemeier Bo Phillips Eric Chan Jodi Barasky Todd Weimer Ryan Regan -Matthew Holben (@holben_pe)
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AuthorI am a Physical Education teacher starting my 14th school year. I have been at the same school all 14 years. Starting this blog as a new project to share my thoughts and ideas. Archives
August 2019
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