It has been a long journey of education for me, and I’m still not done yet. I started in 2012 with an interest in health and sport, education was only a fleeting thought in my mind at the time. When my university studies kicked off, I loved learning about the human body and how it functioned in my kinesiology studies. I got to learn lot’s about how the body applied forces to move, how the body transforms it’s nutrients into energy, what nerves are responsible movements in different body parts, how the brain has the incredible ability to reassign responsibility for certain actions within brain centers when there is damage to limbs or sections of the brain. All of this information to be was entrancing but it was always missing something, until I took a class that taught us about living with disability within society. In this class we were paired up with a student from Riffel high school who was living with a disability, we would spend much of our time interacting with them in the gym and playing sports. This is where I found my passion for teaching physical education, I had some much fun in that class that I knew it was something I wanted to pursue further.
I then decided that it was time to make a transfer into the education program, but why stop there? I knew my old school system, the francophone school system did not have enough teachers to meet the demand of students that were applying, so I made it my goal to add on a french and health minor to my studies so that I could become a physical education teacher who could serve an important purpose within the community that raised me. My first step towards becoming a teacher was joining Big Brothers an organization that allowed me to mentor a child and become a positive influence in their life. I’ve learned from that experience that connecting with students is critical because their home life can be stressful and that school and a trusted teacher can be all they need to feel more confident in their own skin.
The second step was my Introduction to Physical Education class, this was an impactful class for me because it was critical in helping me develop my teaching philosophy. I do not think that physical education and outdoor education get the respect and time they deserve in our schools because they have more value than what society grants them. Additionally physical education cannot simply be a class that allows kids time to run around and be physically active while learning about sports, there is much more to it than that. Kids should be learning about basic movement patterns and how to preform them properly, nutritional information that helps them understand and improve their eating habits, the impact of physical activity on their mental well-being, how to plan physical activity plans to keep them active for a lifetime, how to respect themselves and others and most importantly personal and social responsibility! A large section of my Introduction to Physical Education class was based on the writings of Don Hellison who is the founder of the idea of personal and social responsibility as the focus of physical education and I am fully subscribed to his methods of teaching. Moving forward I hope to find more like-minded authors who can add to my philosophy and help me develop it further.
The third step has been getting into the schools for the first time and actually interacting with an environment that has students. This semester Education Core Studies has given me the opportunity to see what a classroom environment is like and what exactly it takes to be responsibly for the learning of two dozen students. I now have a better understand of what kind of organization is expected of me, and what systems I can implement to make sure that all students are as organized as I am. I feel I can interact with students in a professional setting and do a good job of explaining concepts to them. I know I have the ability to command the attention of classroom and teach them material0 but also allow the students the freedom they need to express themselves so that their peers can learn from them. I’ve learned more about the tasks that teachers take care of during their downtime between classes and what kind of preparation is needed to put together a solid lesson. Overall, I feel that this semester has given me more confidence and reassurance that I can indeed see myself doing this and being successful at it.
There isn’t much else to do now than to move forward and apply myself.