For my 10 hours of outside practical experience, I spend my hours mostly with the sport of track & field. Some of my hours are spent during actual track practice. I am a member of Suny Cortland's Men's track & field team, and also one of captains and leaders of the team as a whole. As a leader on this team, my coach expects me to conduct my event group (400m runners) everyday in practice and teach them how to be better runners. During these practices I give positive and specific feedback to my teammates on proper sprinting mechanics. I also explain and demonstrate the principles, techniques and methods of regulating movement of body in order to achieve proficiency as a track athlete. If I see someone in my group or on my team slacking off or not giving enough effort, I try to bring them back on track and motivate them to work harder in practice. For the rest of my outside hours I did volunteer work at our Suny Cortland Track & Field Clinic on March 25, 2012. Every year my track program here at Cortland puts together this clinic for middle and high school athletes and coaches to learn more about the sport of track. In this clinic the athletes are able to physically perform warm-ups, drills, and other important aspects of track. Since I'm a sprinter with a lot of experience in this sport, I was able to conduct and demonstrate a proper warm up and taught the athletes proper sprinting mechanics. I taught the high school athletes how to use starting blocks if they ever were able to use them at a track meet. Similar to my college teammates, I gave positive and specific feedback to the athletes on technique and body alignment; and I explained and enforced safety rules and regulations in the sport of track & field. Through these experiences I have grown more as a future educator and my passion for track & field will help me bring that passion into the classroom when I teach.
On Thursday April 26, 2012 I had the the opportunity to attend the Spring 2012 Portfolio Showcase held in Park Center Building where the Cortland P.E Department awarded 16 teacher-candidates with honors on their professional portfolio. The recipients who I really admire were Lima Stafford and Jamie Boldish.
Lima Stafford
Jamie Boldish
By viewing Lima's portfolio I notice that she very organized and everything looked neat and presentable. She had a lot of certificates showing how active she was during her 4 years at Cortland and everything she did, she did to the best of her ability. One thing Lima told me was "take advantage of your college experience by getting involved. The years are flying by quick and will not be waiting on you. Take advantage of what college has to offer and get to know and understand yourself first. You can't help others if you can't help yourself or have no idea who you are. Learn to love Suny Cortland instead of complaining about it". I really took that to heart and she really inspired me get involved more with the physical education program and any other programs on campus. When I viewed Jamie's portfolio, I notice that it was different from the others. It was unique in its own way, and Jamie is a very creative person so she made her portfolio stand out among the others. Just like Lima, Jamie was very involved during her 4 years at Cortland, and she received many awards also for all her great accomplishments. Looking through the portfolio, I notice that everything was easy to read and every section had great pictures of Jamie teaching or volunteering. Jamie told me to "do more than I'm ask of, instead of just doing what's required because it shows how much you care about your profession and brings out the best in not just you as a teacher but the best in your future students". I really learned a lot from this portfolio showcase and it gave me motivation to stay involved and to take advantage of every opportunity given to me because you never know when that next opportunity will roll around.
Apart of my EDU 255 final for the class, my Professor had us create a bulletin board on the sport we taught in Lab D or the theme of our lessons. Some students were paired up and some did the bulletin board by themselves. I was paired with another student name Justin Nassivera, in which we decided to do our bulletin board on our lessons of table tennis and the skills we taught during the lesson. We magically split the board half way, so one side was for my skill and the other side was for his skill. My skill was the forehand topspin, and the cues were "reach, grease, and follow through". Justin's skill was the side spin, and his cues were"slice, strike, and follow through". We added pictures of each of our cues to show everyone how each cue is suppose to be performed. We also added the history of table tennis, the rules of table tennis, and any further information our viewers wanted to know about the sport, and how students can play outside of the normal class period. Even though it took us a long time to create this bulletin board, it was definitely worth our time. This project prepares us for our EDU 256 course, where we have to do observation hours at a middle school for one week, and then at a high school for one week. During this two week process, we have to create a bulletin board for the school's physical education department. By doing this table tennis bulletin board I know what to expect when I start the next one, I know how much time I might need to finish the board, and lastly, the amount of supplies I will need to make the board look presentable to others. I believe bulletin boards can be a great way to inform people on information about staying healthy and active, and can help them find the right activity for them. Not only will the board help them become informed, but will also give them the information they need to start engaging in these activities.
For our last teaching lessons of Lab D, my classmates taught different sports and activities to the class in EDU 255. From the video you will see that we had a wide range of lessons, from performing yoga to learning how to play speed stacking with cups. I felt like everyone did a awesome job at teaching their lessons, using great technology, and dealing with several behavioral and life threatening problems such as seizures and broken arms. I not only learned so much from Professor Yang, but I learned a lot from my own peers. They taught me how to be more creative, going beyond my abilities, stepping out of my comfort zone, and learning how to work well with others on a professional level. From the beginning of this semester to the final ending, we all have improve so much as future physical educators; learning how to speak louder to a large group of people, knowing how to modify your lesson for students who may be having trouble with the skills or students who need more of a challenge so they won' be bored during class. From EDU 255, I've made great friends with dedicated individuals who love teaching physical education and who want to make a major impact on the younger generation on how to live a healthy and well fit lifestyle. I'm going to miss this class and I hope the best for everyone I came in contact with through EDU 255.
I finally taught my last lesson for EDU 255 on the forehand topspin in table tennis for my Lab D lesson. For this lesson I had to teach for 20 minutes with a teaching style of "reciprocal", (students work in a partnership, the performer and the the observer, to give each other feedback on the criteria provided by the teacher), and my lesson focus was "motivation".
I started my lesson with an instant activity that would immediately get my students ready for physical activity, which was yoga that I learned from another student name Trish, who taught her Lab D lesson on yoga. I thought this was a great chance to scaffold her lesson of yoga into my instant activity that the students would remember. After my instant activity, I went straight into telling the students the class rules and explaining what my expectations were for them. I always want my students to follow three important rules: follow directions, safety, and respect. By following these rules, class would run smoothly and would be extra fun!
For my lesson, we were located down in the squash-ball courts in the basement of Park Center of Suny Cortland. I choose this area because it obtained the table tennis tables, and the courts were perfect size for playing table tennis. I had to use more than one court due to the progressions of my lesson, and because of the size of the courts. One room was for my instant activity and the overview of my class rules. The next room was where I explained the three cues for the forehand topspin, which was "reach, grease, and follow through". I demonstrated all the cues in this room with the students and had them practice first with their hand, a bigger size ball, and no table tennis net. We got into some competitions to see who could get the most hits in 1 minute between two groups that consist of 4 players and one table. The next room, I introduced the table tennis racquet, a smaller ball, and the table tennis net. I went over the cues and safety again just to remind the students of what I expected them to do.
Throughout the lesson I fell into some behavioral problems that needed to be taken into account. One behavioral problem came from a student name Stephanie, who began to make a scene during class with a student name Dan who supposedly cheated on her with another student name Leslie. I handled this situation at first by ignoring them so they would stop arguing, then I had eventually split them up to avoid any farther problems. Stephanie still was mad at Leslie, and began to argue with her again during class, calling her bad names; so I immediately sent Stephanie into a corner for 10 seconds away form the class so she can regroup and think about what better actions she could have taken. I thought this worked out well since everything went smooth again and everyone was well behaved. As Stephanie is in her 10 second timeout, she screams out a curse word to Leslie that was very inappropriate; so I removed her from my class and told her to stay outside until I was ready for her to come back in. Eventually I brought her back in, and we discussed again what the class rules were and for the remainder of the class, she finally behaved like she should in a classroom setting. I thought I handled this situation well, as in removing the problem and not stopping the class due to one student causing a mischief.
One thing I did learn from this lesson is that when dealing with older students, you wouldn't discipline them the same as you would discipline 3rd grade students. The students for my Lab D lesson were in 10th grade, and I was treating them like 3rd graders; putting them in straight lines to walk and putting them in timeouts. If I were to change anything about my lesson it would be treating my students appropriately and handling behavior problems appropriately. Other than that, I thought I did a great job introducing and teaching the forehand topspin of table tennis. I had great cues and progressions. My hook was very catchy that the students were able to relate to it. From Lab A1 to Lab D, I have grown so much as a future physical educator. I believe learning how to deal with student behaviors will come with time and experience, and I feel that I can teach in a real classroom setting right now if I had a chance to. I'm so excited about teaching now than ever before because of what I learned from Professor Yang in EDU 255. Lab D proved that anything can happen in a lesson, you just have to be ready for every kind of situation or problem. Teaching physical education is fun and I enjoy it so much that I can't wait to get out in the real world and teach and impact the lives of our younger generation.
For my 10 hours of outside practical experience, I spend my hours mostly with the sport of track & field. Some of my hours are spent during actual track practice. I am a member of Suny Cortland's Men's track & field team, and also one of captains and leaders of the team as a whole. As a leader on this team, my coach expects me to conduct my event group (400m runners) everyday in practice and teach them how to be better runners. During these practices I give positive and specific feedback to my teammates on proper sprinting mechanics. I also explain and demonstrate the principles, techniques and methods of regulating movement of body in order to achieve proficiency as a track athlete. If I see someone in my group or on my team slacking off or not giving enough effort, I try to bring them back on track and motivate them to work harder in practice. For the rest of my outside hours I did volunteer work at our Suny Cortland Track & Field Clinic on March 25, 2012. Every year my track program here at Cortland puts together this clinic for middle and high school athletes and coaches to learn more about the sport of track. In this clinic the athletes are able to physically perform warm-ups, drills, and other important aspects of track. Since I'm a sprinter with a lot of experience in this sport, I was able to conduct and demonstrate a proper warm up and taught the athletes proper sprinting mechanics. I taught the high school athletes how to use starting blocks if they ever were able to use them at a track meet. Similar to my college teammates, I gave positive and specific feedback to the athletes on technique and body alignment; and I explained and enforced safety rules and regulations in the sport of track & field. Through these experiences I have grown more as a future educator and my passion for track & field will help me bring that passion into the classroom when I teach. 
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