Hey Reader!
I hope you're doing great! I know that a lot of PE teachers across North America are slowly (or quickly) making their way back to their schools this week.
While I still don't have access to my gym (it's fine, everything is fine), I am getting ready so that I can hit the ground running once our building opens up.
In this week's newsletter, I thought I could walk you through some of the systems that I have built for my gym so that I can a) get the most out of every lesson and b) survive the madness of a 30-minute block revolving door schedule.
Let's dive in!
First, a quick confession about why I built any of this in the first place.
After I returned to teaching PE in a public school setting, I couldn't figure out why I was leaving school every single day completely wiped. It wasn't for a lack of trying. I had goals, and good ones: I wanted every single lesson to be as effective as it could possibly be, and I was working hard to make that happen.
James Clear has a line about this that I think about constantly: you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.
That was my whole problem. I had the goals. I just didn't have the systems yet.
And the thing that finally shifted for me was realizing who the systems were supposed to be for. For the longest time, I was the system. I was the one running around putting out fires for 30 straight minutes, and remember that I teach primary, so there are a lot of fires. Once I started building things my students could run without me, everything changed.
So here are two of them. They're small, they cost almost nothing, and you could have both of these going by next week.
The Hydration Station
This one I stole from #PhysEdU member Krista Rahn. It's a 102 litre tote with a big sticker on it that says Hydration Station. Water bottles go in the tote when students arrive, and if you want a drink during class, you go to the tote and you drink over the tote.
If you've ever taught in a gym with water bottles in it, you already know why this exists. Bottles get thrown, bottles get kicked, bottles get left behind, and bottles spill. I don't have time to mop between lessons. I really don't have time to deal with a kid slipping on somebody else's water. Drinking over the tote means that when a bottle slips out of a small hand, and Lord knows it will, it lands in a big plastic box instead of all over my floor.
The Bunny Bins
Two milk crates stacked on top of each other with labels on them. Sweater comes off, purse needs a home, anything that would otherwise end up on my floor: it goes in the bunny bin.
I was just so tired of looking around at the end of the day and seeing hoodies and hats everywhere, and our lost and found bins are permanently overflowing to the point of being useless.
Here's the piece that makes it actually work. When students line up at the end of class, they check the bunny bin. If something's still in there and nobody claims it, that top bunny bin goes back to the homeroom with the class, and it stays there until somebody claims their stuff. That's why there are two: one leaves, one stays for whoever's walking in next.
The amount of lost and found I deal with now is basically zero.
Ok, so those two are the easy ones.
There are eleven systems in my gym altogether, and I've written up every single one of them in a new post that went live on the blog this morning: the Full Value Contract we do in the hallway before anybody comes through the door, Treasure Time, the squads, and the three repair systems I'm proudest of (one for a hurt body, one for hurt feelings, one for a hurt friendship, each with its own spot in the gym that a kid can walk to without needing me first).
But I want to tell you about the part of it that I think actually matters most, because it isn't a system at all. It's the answer to the question you're probably already asking, which is: when on earth do you find the time to teach all of this?
The answer is that I don't teach them. We play them.
My whole Introduction unit is eight lessons, and every one of them is a game. Not a game plus a procedures talk. A game where the routine is the thing being practised. Freeze Dance teaches tuning in. Hungry Hungry Hippos introduces the squads and squad orders. Treasure Time gets four lessons of prerequisites before it launches in Lesson Five.
And here's my favourite bit. My students tap our Full Value Contract card on the wall on their way into the gym starting on Lesson One, and nobody explains it to them. They just tap it and we play. It isn't until Lesson Eight that we sit down and actually build the contract, using their words, after three weeks of having already lived inside the thing.
If I announce the expectations on day one, I get compliance, and I get about a week of it. If I let them live it for three weeks and then ask them to name it, I get ownership.
That's the difference between a contract and a poster.
One last thing worth saying out loud: two of the best systems in my gym aren't mine. The Hydration Station came from Krista Rahn and Treasure Time came from Megaera Regan, and I discovered both of these ideas inside #PhysEdU.
That's honestly the whole reason that community exists. Somebody solves a problem in their gym in Ohio and six months later it's saving my floor in Nova Scotia. If you've built something that fixes a problem in your space, come share it with us. I'd love to steal it.
Have a great week getting your space ready, and if you're still locked out of your building like I am, I feel you.
Happy Teaching!
Join #PhysEdU Today!
Community Tier is $10/year. Access to all campus spaces, monthly #PEChat discussions, PubPD sessions, monthly freebies, and a community that actually helps you grow.
Plus Tier is $49/year. Everything in Community, plus access to the Games space (which includes downloadable, sub-friendly PDF versions of each game), assessment tools, and Library space (which is full of Atomic Essays, exclusive posts, and more!)
Pro Tier is $99/year. Everything in Plus, plus workshops, the Visuals Space (where you can access and download my entire Premium Visuals library), and our Mentor Circle where we work through challenges like this together.
|
I hope you found some value in this edition of The #PhysEd Newsletter! If you did, feel free to invite others to sign up for it!
Happy Teaching!
Joey
Joey Feith
Say hi 👋 on Threads or Instagram
🎓 Join me at #PhysEdU
🥳 You're awesome!
Thanks for reading all the way through! Reply with any questions you may have.
Edit your profile or unsubscribe.
Want to keep learning together?
→ Join #PhysEdU - find a tier that works best for you.
→ Book A Workshop - learn more about my speaking services.
Send mail to 600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246
|