My major is Physical Education and Health and when people hear that I am going to become a Physical Education teacher, they automatically respond with, "oh, so you're going to be a gym teacher." But, I am not going to be just a gym teacher. People do not realize the importance of this field nor the difficulty of it. People just assume I will be throwing balls at children and just make sure they don't kill each other. This is far from what my job requires, or at least that is what I am learning.
As I have explained Physical Education and Health is definitely alot more significant than many people would like to believe. Knowledge is an extreme factor in my job just like any other subject a teacher may be teaching. Physical Education has alot of terms that are used in order to explain how to play a specific sport; and for each sport, I must break down every skill so that the students can understand exactly how to kick the ball, how to get the ball into the net, and why there are specific terms for different sports/activities. Also, the significance of physical activity in one's life is taught to these students so they can comprehend that having some form of physical activity in their life will help them live longer.
The other half of my job is to teach health. Health has many different topics that can be taught depending on what at age level. Whether it be nutrition, diseases, puberty, drugs, sex, or many other topics, I will be giving out alot of knowledge to help my students live a long healthy life. So, hopefully after reading this semi-long blog, you will understand the importance of physical education and health and how much knowledge is really given by physical education/health teachers.
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7 comments:
Of course people think that there is no learning taking place in a physical education setting. That is how it has been portrayed for years. Just like Jessica said, there are so many ways that one can acquire knowledge from being in a health/physical education classroom. It's just the factor of, is the teacher allowing that to take place? No, unfortunately that is not always the case. But an effective teacher does make sure that happens. People seem to think that they know all about the body and how to take care of it. The fact is, there is so much information out there that the validity of what information people get isn't always where it should be. False information is always being presented because "someone" found it to be true and people take that at face value. As physical educators we instill the knowledge of not only presenting "accurate" information, but how to find the validity of information that is out there everyday; that people read, hear, see on television etc. There is so much knowledge that could be gained from being a physical education classroom, people just have to pay attention to it and see it for what it is.
Since Sofia has commented in detail about the importance of physical education, I want to respond a little on Health Education. The information learned in Health class is not just transferable to the real world, it is vital. Nutrition and sex education are two topics in Health that people will have to know until they are long past their days in school. How many people have diabetes, heart disease, weight issues, etc? How many teenage pregnancies are there each year? It is obvious this information is important and needs to reach the youth of America.
I think Phys. Ed. is an important learning experience because it teaches lessons directly valuable to life. At least in my High School we learned a lot on health. Such as how to budget and work in teams both academically and physically.
To be honest, before knowing anything about physical education, I thought of it as many kinesthetic courses until my friend, who is a physical education major, went into details on some of the courses required for his major. I was surprised to hear that many requirements were of different sciences. My ignorance of the matter led me to believe most of what physical educators were taught were active courses. It is tough and challenging being that as an physical educator, one must acquire much knowledge in many sciences and health topics, along with having knowledge of kinesthetic activities.
I don't think that the problem of Physical education is people being ignorant about the learning that takes place in a Phys Ed setting, it is what they see happening in the physical education programs in the schools today.
People tend to comment on what they see more than what is going on behind the scene and what they see are schools just having student run around and do basic exercise instead of emphasizing the importance of this subject and passing on the knowledge that the teacher learned in college.
Again this goes back to the state, national and district curriculum and the basic questions that we need to provoke in the students which are "why" do i need to know about this and "so what".
I think the reason people have the reaction they do when you tell them your major is that in a lot of physical education classes the teachers don't really teach anything or even necessarily make the students do anything. For example, I spent four years of high school PE in a class of like 40+ people standing on a volley ball court letting every one around me hit the ball. That wasn't so much PE as it was wasting my time.
PE can be a really important thing, but not if that's the type of class kids are getting in school. With instruction like that, is it really suprising people don't take it seriously?
Physical education is a great class because the teacher and student relationship is much different then another class. Students are freer to express themselves in a way that they will not be punished. The P.E. class room can be set up in a way that encourages a safe social area for all to enjoy.
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