Week One

     This was the first week of school at Peotone Junior High. Since this was the first week, it was good to get to know my cooperating teacher and most importantly the students. This week we set the foundation for the rest of the school year with the students. For instance, we went over rules, expectations, squad lines (each student’s spot to sit in the gym before warmups), bus evacuation, tornado drill, fire drill, etc. Day one allowed me to introduce myself and observe my cooperating teacher so that I understood what was expected of me. Day 2 and 3 my cooperating teacher let me run through the rules, expectations, and all the drills. It was a great experience for me to go over important material like that and it was an honor that my cooperating teacher trusted me to address such important information with the students. Student responses varied each class period. The morning classes took the information and drills seriously while a couple of the afternoon classes filled with the older students were not receptive to how important the information and procedural tasks being addressed are. This will be one big challenge for me to overcome. Working with three different grades and ages comes with a significant difference in maturity level. One specific example of how these older groups were behaving (8th graders) would be the bus evacuation. Their inability to focus on me instructing proper ways of exiting a bus in an emergency became an issue. Students thought jumping out of the bus rather than sliding out properly was humorous. To me, this was significant because I am going to have to be able to adapt to each individual and each class. My goal for next week is to start to learn more student’s names. As I was taking attendance Thursday and Friday this week, I was still getting to know each student and trying to put a face to a name. Quickly learning the students’ names is not only valuable for me as a teacher, but also shows the students that I respect and value each of them as an individual.

Classroom Confidential

     Schmidt offers plenty of intelligences that can help teachers succeed within their classrooms. I hope and plan to use two of his intelligences in my own classroom. Those being kinesthetic and visual & spatial intelligences. First, being kinesthetic because physical movement is an important aspect of physical education. I firmly believe that using physical activities can maximize student’s overall educational experience. Yes, I said overall education. Not just physical education. Every teacher should look for ways to implement physical activity within their classroom. Getting students up and active gets the blood flowing to their brains while creating a fun environment. Second, being visual and spatial intelligence. Visual because everything we do in physical education is performing active movements. Students watch the teacher and other students perform the movements correctly and take note of that. Spatial because we need to be aware of our surroundings. There tends to be a lot of running around and moving in the gym, therefore, being focused and aware of what is happening is vital to succeeding and being safe.

     Schmidt brings in great insight on full brain learning. My belief is that for students to fully understand what is being taught they need to experience all aspects of the topic and be instructed step by step. If a teacher just throws everything at them all at once then failure from being overwhelmed is a high possibility. By instructing step by step, the teacher can ensure that everyone understands all parts of the material then move forward as a class. In physical education we could use this step by step process by using visual techniques to teach and then providing opportunity for the students to try and apply what they were taught. All-day long students are instructed using auditory techniques and since each individual learns differently, by implementing different teaching techniques, we become more beneficial to students and their learning styles. 

- Joseph DiLeo