Curriculum

Happy New Year!

I was so grateful for Christmas break, but I have to admit I was wanting it to last longer.  I got plenty of rest, but I still wanted to sleep in.  Well, one week after being back I got my wish.  We had an entire week off because of snow.  My school is in Atlanta, Georgia where they freak out at the smallest bit of snow.  We have about 15 plows for the entire state I think.  haha Its completely ridiculous.   They also don't believe in putting salt on the roads, so the ice won't melt until the sun comes out and the temperatures warm up.  It was a second Christmas break!  The only problem now is we have to make up those days.  This is all part of the teaching experience, I guess.

My subject today is on curriculum.  At some point before you graduate from the education program at Cedarville you are required  to take a curriculum class.  There were three people in my class and we all got to work together to create a PE curriculum K-12.  I liked the class because it wasn't very hard, but I do remember thinking it was a bit of a waste of time because I thought I would never be involved in a curriculum writing process.  Boy was I wrong.

My school is certified through the state and also through ACSI.  This year is our reevaluation year for ACSI and they will be coming this spring to check out our programs.  We are all having to complete curriculum guides and a scope and sequence for our classes.  You would think that since I had taken the curriculum class in college that this would be no problem for me...wrong.  If I was simply writing a PE curriculum, then it would have been okay, but since I'm also teaching science and Bible this year, I had three curriculum guides to write.  Awesome.

Text books are amazing resources.  My science text book had the majority of the information ACSI was looking for.  Biblical integration was already listed in a chart in my book and the student objectives were already in my book.  My Bible text was also extremely helpful.  All of the student objectives and Bible verses covered in each lesson are clearly displayed in a chart at the beginning of my teacher resource book.  When creating the curriculum guide for PE, you typically will not have a text book there to give you all of the answers.  Here you have to be a bit more creative.  I had to determine what my objectives were for each unit I would be covering in a year.  That took a bit of time.  As a PE department we worked on a philosophy statement to encompass all of our classes.   I will copy and paste that below for you to view.  This is a Christian philosophy statement. 

Keep paying attention in your classes, you never know when you might need it. :)

Philosophy Statement:

There are implications from Scripture implying the value of physical achievement and fitness.  The Bible mentions men of great skill in archery and other weapons; men of great running ability; and men who performed unusual feats in their old age.  

Games and athletic competition provide many pictures of the Christian life.  We are encouraged in Scripture to be athletes who are inspired by the goal; we are told that a race is seen as a challenge to the runner who is fit; and we see that self-discipline is essential for one who would win.  God’s Word also teaches that obedience to the rules of the game is required as well as confidence in and dependence on the coach.  In contrast to athletic competition, play has the sense of complete freedom and enjoyment and the sense of celebration and creativity.

At Dominion Christian School, we keep in mind that God sets standards for our activities that are distinct from those in the secular world.  We are to give priority to godly attitudes and behavior rather than mere physical achievement; we must not be controlled by desires of the flesh and must not give an appearance of evil.  We are to recognize the long- term effects of what we do now and should be concerned with God’s glory in our choices above all else. We encourage our students to realize that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and we are to offer them to God as a living sacrifices, which is holy and pleasing to Him.  As we are commanded to never be conformed to this world, our mind and heart in competition and play should be one of being transformed to His will for us.

With this in mind, physical education at Dominion Christian School seeks to honor God in all our activities and games. Physical education is seen as another opportunity to give God the glory that He alone deserves.  As our students develop this mindset, the playing field and gymnasium will become another arena in which to worship our Creator. When disagreements occur during a game, when one team loses or wins, all attention is focused on behaving and settling the disagreements based on commands from Scripture and from Christ Himself.  The goal is to not only learn physical skills, team sports, and personal fitness, but to learn how to respond in all situations as Christ would.  Physical education recognizes that in the face of competition, all types of life situations occur and thus this course becomes a unique vehicle in which to teach Christian life skills, both individually and as well as when part of a team. 

It is to this end that we seek to honor our Lord, teach our students valuable life skills as well as physical skills, and remember that whatever we do, we do as unto the Lord.

Middle School

Hello,
Sorry I did not post the entire month of November...things are a little busy around here, not to mention my sister got married over Thanksgiving break so on top of school there has been a lot going on for me.

The subject of my blog today is class content and adapting to middle school students.  When I graduated from Cedarville I had every intention of being a high school PE teacher, but now I find myself teaching at the middle school level.  Although it wasn't my ideal job, I have grown to love what I do.  There were a lot of things that I had to learn early this year in order to be a successful teacher.  I couldn't teach PE as I had learned during my student teaching or during my first year out of college as a long term high school PE substitute.  I really had to adjust my ideas and methods of teaching to fit with who I was teaching.

The first thing I had to learn was to be a bit nicer to the students.  I couldn't be as hard on my middle school students as I had been to my students at the high school level.  Middle school students are very sensitive and you have to be a bit more careful of their emotional well being.  Sarcasm must be limited because they tend to take things very seriously.  When you discipline, you must do so calmly and be sure they understand exactly why they are receiving this punishment otherwise they will twist what you said and turn it into a much bigger issue. 

The second thing I learned to change was my expectation on the students.  You have to be more lenient, forgiving, and gracious with the middle school group.  They make a lot of ridiculous decisions and comments and they don't have complete control over their bodies yet.  You have to be kind and understanding of their age.  I'm not trying to say they need to be babied, but they do need more attention than a group of high school students.  What they are looking for is your approval and your support.  They need much more encouragement and praise for trying.

My class content needed to be altered as I changed from teaching high schoolers to middle schoolers.  Middle school is a very awkward time for the students physically.  They do well with additional practice with hand-eye coordination and with basic locomotor movements.  Relays work really well as a warm up to practice these things, not to mention the students love the competition of a relay.  In my class we do a lot of relays with crab walking, frog hops, bear crawling, skipping, jumping, wheel barrow, running, skipping, sliding, etc.  All of these movements help the students break out of their awkward physical stage.  Not only did my warm up have to change, but also the meat of what I was teaching had to be adjusted.  I take my time as I teach each sport unit.  For example, we spent 5 weeks in our volleyball unit this year.  I gave detailed instruction for each skill (serving, setting, passing), I performed a lot of skills test on my students and we played a lot of lead up games.  By the end of the unit, my students had really improved because I took my time to allow them to grow.  In high school, I did not need to be as thorough. In between each sport unit, we spend a few days playing cooperative games.  My students favorites are dodge ball (of course) and anything similar to kickball.

*Don't worry Coach Freese, I've only played dodge ball with them once this year.* :)

Parent Teacher Conferences

Dear CU Readers,
 Parent teacher conferences are something you have yet to experience as a student at CU.  I just had my first official parent teacher conferences Monday evening.  Our first quarter ended Friday, grades were due Monday morning and we had parent teacher conferences Monday afternoon.  Monday was a teacher work day.  We had from 9-12pm to work on grades or anything else in our classrooms and then from 1-7pm we had our conferences.  I think the way our school set them up was a bit crazy, but that's just my opinion.  We did not have scheduled meeting times--the parents could just come and go as they pleased during those 6 hours.  It was INSANE.  I literally did not have a free minute to myself.  Parents came out of the woodwork!  I was so exhausted when we were finally done.

I made notes on each student and had it all ready to go so that when the parents came in I would be ready to discuss their child's behavior in my class.  This was really helpful, especially since I had no time in between each set of parents.  I also had their grades printed and ready for the parents to look over as well.  I began each conference in prayer and then started with the positive comments.  I talked about the personalities of my students and how I enjoyed having them in my classes.  I talked about their classroom behavior.  I talked about their work ethic and their ability to turn things in complete and on time.  I talked about their respectful attitudes toward their peers and their teacher.  ...You get the idea.  Any comments I had that were negative, I approached cautiously.  I honestly was expecting some parents to be rude and nasty or to completely disregard my opinions and observations of their children, but I had absolutely no issues.  Praise God!  All of my parents were kind and complimentary of my teaching and what I have helped their children with so far this year.  Anytime I mentioned something their child needs to work on they agreed with me and we discussed how we were going to help them improve in the future.  All in all it was a great time for me to connect with the parents and team up with them to help their children improve.  I loved meeting all the parents and hearing their opinions of how my classroom structure is helping or not helping their children.

One set of parents almost made me cry (in a good way).  About a month ago I led their son to Christ.  He had been asking questions in Bible class and demonstrating an interest in Christianity.  I knew he was new to the faith because on the first day of school he did not have a Bible for class.  I was so thrilled when he approached me after class one day and asked me to pray with him.  After we prayed, he expressed concerns about his parents salvation.  He wasn't sure if they were saved and he was really worried about them.  I challenged him to go home and talk to them about it.  He came to me the next day thrilled to report that his whole family was composed of born again Christians.  During the conference with his parents, they explained to me that the lines of communication have been opened in their family and they are all pursuing Christ more and more every day.  They told me that I have had a huge part in this and they are so blessed to have their son in my class.  This is why I almost cried.  It was such a special thing for me to hear and I praise God that he lets me be a vessel for His work. 

You can now understand a bit about conferences.  They can be a great time for you to connect with parents and team up with them to help the student.  They can also be a time where you address any issues and hopefully take care of those issues completely.  In my case, the conferences were also a time where I was encouraged and inspired to keep doing what I'm doing. 
I am truly blessed that God provided this job for me and has equipped me do serve Him as a teacher.  I pray that God leads all of you to the perfect job and that you can carry all your knowledge from CU to your area of work.  Colossians 3:23 "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men."
 

Observations

We all love being observed as we teach...right?  ha! We might like getting the positive comments back about our teaching but do we really like to hear about the things we are bad at?  Do we really want to hear about what we need to improve on?  I've been through the student teaching observations and a few job interview teaching observations so I thought I was done being observed.  I was wrong.

Today my principal is coming by to observe one of my science classes.  To be honest, I'm not too nervous because I'm just going to continue with my plan and teach as I normally would, but there is one part of me that worries.  I did not get a degree in science.  In fact, the science classes I took at CU were among my worst grades in college.  Earth science, Anatomy, Biology, you get the idea.  I hated those classes and look what I'm doing now...teaching about those things.  Funny the way God works.  :)  I plan to teach from a power point today to continue on with my weeks lessons.  I thought about switching my days around this week so the principal could see me doing a lab with the students, but I think its best that he sees me in my true teaching environment.  I do look forward to a few positive comments and I will actually be happy to hear a few words of critique so I can continue to improve as a teacher outside of my field.  Its good to be observed because it can break us of our lazy habits.  For example, I don't really like to move around the room as I teach.  I like to stay at the front of the room and interact with the students in that way.  Your observer will be all over you if you do that.  They want to see that you move around preventing problems from happening and keeping all students on track and focused.  This is something I will change today as I am observed.  If I am constantly evaluating myself, then I would have fixed this problem on my own.  I would have recognized my lazy teaching patterns and I would have fixed it before my observation day. 

Luckily I will only be observed twice a year by my principal.  We had to fill out a self evaluation form at the beginning of the year and the principal will go over that form with us after we are observed the first time.  We will fill the form out again at the end of the year and see if we have grown as a teacher.

I actually get informally observed at least 3 times a week by the principal, headmaster, and athletic director in my PE class.  They have meetings together in the gym as my first period 8th grade PE class is going on so they get to see what I'm doing and hear what I am teaching my students.  Pretty awesome isn't it?  haha  It definitely keeps me on my toes as I'm teaching that's for sure.

The point of this blog is to encourage you to take your observations seriously.  Use them to improve and use them to practice for your real job where you will continue to be observed every now and again.  Be able to evaluate yourself.  Think critically about your teaching style and your teaching methods.  If you can critique yourself every now and again you will push yourself to be a better teacher.  

Grading in PE

Grading in PE can be a controversial subject.  Some PE teachers grade solely based on participation.  Others document all their grades and make sure what they are scoring is factual.  I do a combination of the two.  I grade in four different categories: Participation, Attitude, Sportsmanship, and Skills Improvement. When it comes to the first three categories I grade based on my observations.  They get 10 points in each of the first three categories every week.  If I observe a girl off to the side in a game not trying very hard, she might get a 8 out of 10 on the week.  She may also lose points in the attitude category for this.  Sportsmanship is different than attitude.  Sportsmanship counts for encouragement, working well with your team for whatever game we are playing, not complaining about the performance of at teammate, etc.  When it comes to skills improvement I can actually document the students grades.  I do pre and post testing for skills and give them a grade based on the improvement between the tests.  For example, we just finished a volleyball unit in PE.  The students were pre and post tested on passing, setting, and serving.  If I saw improvement in their scores and in my observations of them during the games I would give them a good score.  If the improvement was minimal, they would get a lower grade, and if there was no improvement at all they would get a low grade.

When it comes to dressing out for class I do not grade for this.  As long as the students are wearing appropriate shoes they can still participate and earn their participation points.  I keep track of how many times they don't dress out and after 5 they receive a detention.

Currently all of my PE students have an A in my class except for one student.  This student has a hard time respecting my authority.  He is always complaining about teams I create or talking back to me when I ask him to do something.  I have given demerits and detentions to try to rectify this behavior and we have had numerous conversations about this.  He knows it is affecting his grade and he seems to care about it, and yet the behavior continues.  He loses points in each category because his poor attitude and demeanor affect his participation and sportsmanship.  Pray that God will change his attitude!

Although its easy to earn an A in my class, you still have to earn it.  I wouldn't say my class is hard by any means, but you do have to learn the skills and prove to me that you are trying to improve.  Enjoy my thoughts on grading!

Parents

Hey CU Readers,
This blog is all about parents--conferences, emails, phone calls, involvement, etc.

Our school sees communication as VERY important.  Before the first day of school we had a Friday night BBQ.  This was the first night I met some of my students and a lot of parents.  Everyone was really friendly and excited for the school year.  I was completely overwhelmed.  This first night I had parents asking me what I would be coaching this year and then they would spend 20 minutes telling me how their daughter was going to be my star basketball player or soccer player.  I had one dad tell me he was trying to get his daughters entire club soccer team to switch to our school.  Pretty insane.   We also had a "Back to School Night" two weeks into school.  Parents would come and go through their child's schedule.  Each class was 7 minutes long.  We were supposed to go over our classroom rules and procedures with the parents this night.  I had already sent home a syllabus to my parents so they all knew my classroom policies so I spent the time going over what we would be learning this year.  In PE I talked about how I typically run a unit and what is required of their students.  I also spend time talking about uniforms and why its important for the parents to make sure their student has their correct uniform every day.  In my Bible class I shared my testimony with the parents.  I felt it was important for them to understand my spiritual condition since I would be influencing the spiritual life of their children.We tend to over-communicate with the parents.  We send out a Knightly News once or twice a week (our mascot is the Knight).  This is a newsletter that communicates all announcements and events going on at the school.  All of our grades and lesson plans are put online for the parents to view at any time.  They don't see all the details of our lesson plan, but they can see the basic idea of what we are doing and what the homework is for that day.   All this to say, parents are totally clued in on what we are doing or trying to do at school.

I am going to give you details on some parent conferences I have had to give you an idea of what its like to communicate with parents.

One parent wanted to get together with all of the teachers who instruct her son.  We all met with her after school and she shared her concerns.  He has ADHD and anger issues so she wants to always be informed on what is going on.  He is in my PE class.  I have not had any issues surface in my class so my involvement with the conference was minimal, however, at the end of the meeting she shared some valuable information.  She began to cry and shared with all of the teachers that her relationship with her husband is falling apart.  He is always traveling and when he is home he hides in the basement and does not help her with either of her two sons, both have ADHD and are a bit of a handful.  Mom is stressed out and is trying to hide the broken relationship from her sons.  Knowing this information will really help us understand why the one boy might have anger issues.  We can love these students more and teacher them better because we have knowledge of their home life.

 Another parent met with me after school last week to check in and see how her daughter is doing in my science class.  This mom used to home school her daughter and is concerned she might not be up-to-speed.  Her daughter does not write in complete sentences and has poor spelling.  Her mom explained to me that she didn't used to make her daughter write out answers because they would just discuss things instead.  Wow.  Now I can understand why this student is the way she is and it will help me break her of these bad habits. This mom also told me the sweetest thing that I will share with you guys.  Her daughter is really shy and does not talk much at school.  Her mom said she LOVES my class and that I have brought out a bit of her personality.  Her mom said that she has never seen her daughter pray for someone more.  HOW SWEET IS THAT??  :) Teaching is awesome!

I am going to give you one more parent example.  I gave a detention to two girls a few weeks ago who were hitting each other.  We assign demerits at our school or detentions if the behavior is severe.  I gave out detentions and contacted the parents to let them know about the situation.  One girls mother and father were waiting at my classroom door at the end of the day to talk with me about it.  Can you say over protective?? Anyway, they were very concerned because their daughter would never do something like this.  We spent about 20 minutes (no joke) discussing what happened and what the punishment would be etc etc.  I thought we had resolved everything, but then I started receiving emails.  Their daughter had taken the other girls pencil box and that is why they were fighting.  Another teacher saw her steal this, so this teacher wrote theft on the detention slip and I wrote fighting.  Let me show you a few sentences of what the parents wrote me in email. 

"I would like to ask though could you possibly change *students name* reasoning for detention to something other than theft on her transcript.*students name* didn’t steal anything. She may have caused a disturbance but calling it theft is probably a little too harsh of a judgment (I would think) and I would not want her to be seen in this light.  Every day, we remind her and our son, that it takes years to build a good reputation/character  and only seconds to tear it down." 

I changed what was written to just fighting on the detention and then received this email:

"Sorry to be a pest in this matter, but I’d venture to say it was more like mild shoving.. and not fighting.. could that be used as the term to accurately describe what had occurred.."

My first thought was that this parent was out of control.  I was pretty annoyed that I was getting these emails.  But the more I thought about it the more I could understand the parents perspective.  I went to the principal on this issue to be sure I was handling the matter in the best way possible.  *Don't ever be too proud to ask for help!*  After discussing this matter with the principal we decided to just leave it at fighting.

Sometimes parents love and concern for their children gets in the way of their judgment.  As teachers we have to be patient and willing to work with parents, but we also have to have control over our classroom and the decisions we make.  In the end, its our decision what happens to the students at school.  Parents will email you all the time about grades.  You have to be firm and make tough decisions sometimes.  For example, parents will look at a test grade and email you asking if their child can make corrections for half credit or if they can do extra credit. You need to be tough.  If the student didn't study or put forth their best effort then they deserve that low grade and they will learn from it.  I have found most of my parents to be very involved, but not in a pushy way.  They have supported me and have encouraged me. 

Hopefully this post has given you some insight into the world of teaching when it comes to dealing with parents.  Feel free to leave any comments, questions or ideas.

Beginnings

Hello CU Readers,
My name is Katie Koch and I am a 2009 graduate.  I spent the past year substitute teaching and coaching and praying for a full time job.  God provided a job for me for the 2010-2011 school year and I am loving it so far.  I have decided to create this blog for you to learn from my first year as a real teacher.  I wish I would have had something like this when I was in school.  I will try to give you as many details as I can, but please feel free to ask me any questions that you may have. 

We began school on August 16th so I am starting my blog a bit late.  I will try to update you on some of the important things from the beginning of the school year. 

I am teaching two PE classes this year: one is 8th grade and one is 6th grade.  I am also teaching two 6th grade science classes and one 6th grade Bible class.  I am also the 6th grade study hall teacher.  I have two planning periods during the day.

I think this is all the background you guys need.  I will try to begin updating soon.
Katie