September 21, 2008

This last week went by really fast which is good because that usually means things are going well. Life is going pretty good as teaching is becoming easier and easier. The kids are starting to get used to me being their teacher and I haven’t really had any problems. My day is pretty nice. Seward High has block scheduling, which is 4-hour and a half periods. I really like this for PE as we can do some sort of fitness activity followed by a game. In high school, I felt like I was spending half the time changing clothes in PE. Anyway, I teach health first which can seem like a long period (I couldn’t imagine having to sit in a math or English class for an hour and a half at a time as a student). That class isn’t that bad though. I’ll probably take over for that fully this next week. After that, I have a prep period. I can easily get everything I need to done during this time. I even leave to get my allergy shots during this time some days. My cooperating teacher says that he never really has to do anything outside of the school day to prepare for class because this prep period is so long. After my prep, I have a PE class followed by lunch and then another PE class to end the day. So my schedule is pretty good.

Leah said something the other day that really hit home. She said that PE and health education are really the only subjects that every student will use the rest of their lives. I already knew that our society really needs good health and PE teachers, but that statement makes me think of them as even more important. Promoting lifetime wellness is extremely important to me and I need to emphasize that in my teaching. I do not want my students to stop being physically active or quit making healthy decisions after they are done with my class. I’ll never forget three summers ago in Vegas when I was at a buffet with Mats Iremark of Sweden and took a picture of a fat person in a motorized scooter. He then put it in his blog with a caption of a “typical American.” That’s sad, but it’s becoming true.

Intramural volleyball ended in a sad note as we lost in the championship game to a team that is unbelievably good. On a good note though, we improved a ton throughout the season as I would guess that we were maybe the 5th best team going in because we had really never played sand volleyball. When you have good guy athletes and some good girls that have played volleyball in the past, the improvement goes up exponentially. By the end, we were right there with the best team. We won the first set, but lost the last two sets devastatingly to keep me from winning my first intramural championship. It was my 3rd second (coed dodgeball and men’s ultimate Frisbee were the others last year).

Saturday, however, I finally got my first intramural championship as Leah and I paired up for coed mixed doubles. We played a tournament and we played well. It was the first time we had played doubles together and it was so much fun. We played some good teams with ex-tennis players and the current tennis coach. We won the championship match 8-3. I really want to play in more tennis tournaments with Leah. I need to get a lot better, though, because the male tennis player needs to be sickly good in order to have a good mixed doubles team.

I get tomorrow off from school because it is a teacher meetings and work day. My co-op is the man as he told me I should just stay home. So I will try to get some random errands done. It should be nice.