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A teacher’s success is determined solely by the effect he/she has on his/her students. Our job is to teach students, and to measure our effectiveness, we need to measure our students’ learning. While it is true that we will not be able to teach every student the same (due to individual differences and circumstances), we can have some idea of how successful we are by looking at the success of our students as a whole and on an individual basis.
The people who should judge us are our students, their parents, and ourselves. The main goal of an educator is to help change the lives of students, therefore the students should judge our success. If our students do not feel like they are learning anything from us or in our classes, then I can not see how anyone could consider us successful. Secondly, our students’ parents need to judge our success. They are the people who see the students the most, and they should have the most knowledge about whether or not their children are learning enough. Lastly, we need to judge ourselves. Self-reflection is a crucial skill that all teachers need to practice. We need to be able to look within ourselves and at our performance to determine where we can improve and what we need to change about ourselves.
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The goal of physical education is to give students the skills to be physically active and healthy for a lifetime. This is the top of the mountain. To get to the top of the mountain, the students need certain tools. In my opinion, the most important tools that the students can have are a knowledge of how exercise and a healthy diet affects their health, the ability to sift through all of the fitness information available, and activities that they enjoy doing that they can participate in for a lifetime.
In physical education, as in any branch of education, knowledge is power. If students are to remain healthy for a lifetime, they will undoubtedly need to know how to do it. By teaching them about such topics as heart rate, a proper diet, the recommended daily amounts of exercise, and other topics related to exercise, I hope to give them this knowledge.
The ability to sift through current information to find out what is right is basically critical thinking. I firmly believe that students should be taught how to think critically in every class. Scan through the television channels on a Saturday morning and take a look at how many different exercise programs, fitness machines, and health supplements are being advertised. While some of these actually do what they are advertised to, many of them could be considered “crockery.” I want my students to know how to determine whether the information they are presented with is valid or not and whether it is right for them, personally.
Lastly, I think it is very important that I expose my students to as wide a range of physical activities as possible. People’s likes and dislikes vary greatly, and it is not my right to limit a student’s potential for staying active by only introducing them to activities which I enjoy or which are the traditional activities. While this method may give the students less time in each unit, I believe that it will give me a better chance to give more students activities which they can enjoy for a lifetime.
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As a physical educator, there are two topics that I am extremely excited to teach about. Both of these topics, which are fishing and disABILITIES awareness, are passions of mine. It is very easy to be excited to teach about your own passions, but I also feel like being passionate about these topics will make me more effective in teaching them. These are two units which I never had in elementary, middle, or high school, but are units which I feel can benefit almost every student who participates in them.
The reason that I am excited to teach fishing as a physical activity is because it can, and often is, a lifetime activity. Personally, fishing has done so much good for me, that I just could not imagine where I would be without this activity in my life. While other students were often out partying and getting in trouble during high school, I was always content to be on the water, wetting a line. Not only that, but it is the best form of stress relief that I know. I understand that not everyone who participates in a fishing unit will feel the same way that I do about it, and there will definitely be a lot of students who do not like it at all, but if I can introduce it to a couple of students each semester who really take an interest in it, I feel like it can definitely make a positive impact on their lives.
The second topic that I am excited to teach about is disABILITIES awareness. What I plan to do is to run a unit each quarter or semester (depending on how the school I am teaching in is set up), in which I introduce all of my students to the world of disABILITIES. I will give the students a similar feeling of what it is like to be physically disABLED by handicapping them (blindfolds to simulate impaired vision, wheelchairs, tying legs together to simulate cerebral palsy, etc.) during the activities they participate in during this unit. I believe this can be so beneficial, especially if I have students in my class who have disABILITIES. DisABILITIES can be a very touchy subject because people are uncomfortable about what they do not know or understand. By introducing them to this and giving them this knowledge, they hopefully will become more comfortable with all people.
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It is definitely true that society holds teachers to higher standards of moral and ethical behavior. There are not many other professions where what you do in the public eye (even legally) can have such a negative impact on your career. In a lot of communities, if it becomes public knowledge that a teacher spends a lot of time in taverns, or if a teacher fathers or mothers a child out of wedlock, or if a teacher shows questionable values, he or she can lose their job because of it.
To me, this higher standard that teachers are held to is justified. We are building the future of our nation and the world, and if our morals or ethics are not in line with what society holds as right, then this is likely to transfer over to our students in some form or another. I can think of no other profession that impacts as many people for as long of a period of time as teaching does.
In some jobs, where the employees do not work with other people or other people's children, they can have poor morals or ethics, yet still have their job performance unaffected by this. For example, a construction worker could close down the bar every night and drive home when he was done, but if he does not get caught driving, and if he shows up on time and ready to go for work every morning, his performance will probably not be affected, and his employers will likely not be all that concerned. The people in his/her community may all have some knowledge about this person's habits, but they probably feel it is none of their business to interfere with his/her personal life. However, give these same characteristics to a teacher, a teacher who is teaching yours or my children, and we are likely to feel a whole lot different about it (and rightfully so).
As teachers, we are entrusted with much of the upbringing of this nation's biggest investments. It is understandable that we are held to a higher moral and ethical standard.
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When I entered college, I had big dreams of graduating from UWSP with a degree in fisheries and limnology and going on to work as a fisheries biologist for the Wisconsin DNR. My, how my career path has changed! I stuck with that idea for one year, and then I went undecided for a semester. Somewhere during this time, I realized how much I liked working with people. I began to focus my career efforts towards something that would allow me to do this. My thoughts soon turned towards teaching, which is something that I had never really considered as an option before. Originally, I had a girlfriend who was an elementary education major, and she kind of planted the seed. I saw how much fun she was having in her classes and how passionate she was about her intended profession, and it began to rub off on me. As I have always been totally obsessed with competitive sports, the outdoors, and just being active in general, physical education (P.E.) seemed like a natural fit.
I actually began taking classes in the P.E. major during the second semester of my sophomore year, and at first I was very unsure about my decision. I totally lacked confidence in my ability to go through with this, and I felt like I would never be able to gain the skills necessary to be an effective physical educator. However, due to some great professors and some great, new-found friends (who just happened to be fellow P.E. majors), I decided to stick with it. It was during my junior year, when I took P.E. 331, that I really learned how much I actually wanted to be a teacher. P.E. 331 is a practicum class in which the univesity works in conjunction with some of the local schools to bring in some of their students for the P.E. majors to teach. I really fell in love with my classes and learned to love teaching. It was at this point that I really began to gain confidence in my decision and my teaching ability.
During my fouth year at UWSP, I got the chance to work with students with disabilites in one of my classes. During this class, students with disabilities would come in from the schools, and we would teach them in small groups or one-on-one situations, either in the pool or in the gymnasium. I had always had a liking or persons with disabilities, but during this class, one of my professors really opened my eyes to the world of Adapted Physical Education (APE). I never knew that there were so many opportunities out there to pursue a career in this line of work.
At this point, my plan is to go on to graduate school to get my degree in APE, and then to come back to Wisconsin and look for a job doing what I want to do. My professors throughout my college career have played a huge role in helping me to determine what it is that I want to do and accomplish in my career. Their motivation, along with my ability to work with other people, my obsession with being fit and active, and my love of persons with disabilities has led me to choose the career path of an Adapted Physical Educator.
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As a student growing up, there were three groups of people that I was most influenced by. First and foremost were my parents. These were the people who I spent the most time with and the people who I trusted the most. These were also the people who taught me the most and consistently gave me the best advice. The second group of people who influenced me most were my friends. They influenced me in a much different way than my parents, and their advice was not always the most sound! The last group of people who influeced me the most was my teachers. I tried not to let them or others know how much of an influence they had on me, but they played a very important role in shaping my personality and core values. As a future teacher, I understand that I will play that same role to many of my students. My influence on them may not always be obvious, but it will often be deep and lasting.
I believe that I have a few key attributes of intellect and character that will allow me to have a positive impact on my students. Creativity, a knack for developing relationships, and a positive outlook on life are gifts that I possess that I feel I can share with my students in a positive way. By using and sharing these gifts, I feel like my students can leave my class positively impacted for a long time.
If you would ask people who know me, they would probably say that creativity would be my defining characteristic. I believe that I have a unique ability to think quickly and to put my thoughts into a format where others can understand them and are excited by them. In the classroom or in the gymnasium, I expect to come up with a lot of new ideas that students have not seen or experienced before, and hopefully they will enjoy this and will be inspired to be creative as well.
As a teacher, developing relationships with my students will allow me to effectively communicate with them on a positive level. Not all of my students will like me, and I will not like all of my students, but I will do my best to respect them, and I will expect the same thing in return. Respect is the fundamental basis to positive relationships, and cultivating respect will be a key focus of my teaching. I have always had the ability to become friends with pretty much anyone whom I wished to, and I expect this ability to really come in handy in the future.
The last personality trait which I possess (probably the most important) is having a very positive outlook on life. I constantly believe that good things are going to happen, and I am continually looking forward to the future. This is something that seems to rub off on my friends and family when I am around them, and I am hoping that I will have this same effect on my students.
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