I’ve just finished a second day of teaching gym classes. I arrive at school at around 8:30-9:00 to set up anything I’ll be using during the lessons, which are centered around basketball. In the AM I had two 1st-3rd grade classes today, and then the preschool class (all in one consecutive run). I had a dribbling obstacle course for these classes, we worked on passing with monkey in the middle, and then I let them play basketball against each other for about ten minutes. The preschoolers are one of my most difficult classes because they’re attention spans are extremely short, there are a lot of them, and they aren’t aware of their ability to knock each other down or drop a basketball on each others skulls. At one point yesterday I found myself intervening as a preschooler sat on his friend’s face.
6 thoughts on “Day 2, Week 2”
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Do you think that teaching or phys ed training are careers that you might want to pursue?
I would definitely consider teaching PE classes, but I don’t think I’d stick with it for more than 2-4 years (but I’m fairly certain unless I find a really cool environment to work in I’ll be bouncing around as a jack of all trades if possible). I for sure want to coach basketball or soccer or football or something like that at some point, and would love to coach as a 2nd job in the capacity Coach Lucas did.
Do you enjoy working with the kids or do you just find it frustrating?
I actually really enjoy it, I think the most difficult part is just that the classes are very short which makes it difficult to balance teaching lessons with giving them time to play and just have fun, if the classes were a little longer I’d like that. The actual teaching and interaction has been great though and the majority of the students are very responsive and happy to be playing basketball. I definitely WOULD NOT like teaching really big classes at larger schools, I think (especially with athletics) it’s really important to have a small enough group that you can engage with each student.
How did the elementary school kids respond to your basketball lessons?
I’d rate about 75% of the kids 1st-8th to be open to learning and diligent as long as I maintain my authority by using voice volume calmly and keeping them engaged, a few kids have trouble focusing or get overexcited but just need more engagement. Preschool is difficult due to the attention span and size of the class, and the 3rd grade class is particularly rowdy and has a tendency to have a bit too much fighting amongst themselves which means I really need to be focused and engaging in that class.