Student Centered Learning

My first goal as an educator is creating a student centered learning environment. I believe by creating a student to student interaction and focus on student centered learning will allow students to have greater connections to their learnings and have learn at a higher level than before. I would create an environment where students not only feel comfortable, but feel appreciated. This also means understanding every child has their own ways of learning and recognizing the various ways students learn: from the visual learners all the way to the kinesthetic learners. Each student brings their own abilities to the classroom, and those abilities should be recognized for each individual, not as a whole.

Creating an Inclusive Classroom

My second goal as a teacher is to create inclusiveness within the classroom or physical education setting. Inclusion embraces the idea that everyone is an individual with different strengths and weaknesses. In many different teaching settings, including PE, inclusion is lacking greatly. Every student should feel that no matter their ability or disability, they should feel the sense of belonging, and be included in the learning and activities. I would follow the abilities based approach, which focuses on the person as a participant in a learning situation, rather than focusing on the disability, activity or environment. Another part to creating an inclusive classroom is using modifications to allow all abled and disabled bodies to be a part of the lesson. Every individual has the right to participate and feel that they are included in what they are doing.

Acknowledging Effort

A high school teacher once told my physical education class “you can be the all-star athlete of the room, or you can be the student who has a minimal sports background. Which ever type of physical ability you have, if you give 100% in what you do, that is what counts.” We tend to figure out very easily who the athletes are in the physical education classes. So why not focus just as much attention on the other students who may not have the same physical abilities, but are still putting 100% of their effort into the activities as well. Even though a student may not be able to do a lay up or kick a field goal as good as those so called “star-athletes”, if they are putting in the same effort to better themselves and give 100%, they should still be rewarded for their efforts.

Creating Student-Teacher Relationships

As a future educator, I want to create relationships with my students that allow them to look at me not only as a facilitator in learning, but also as a mentor and supporter. Hamre & Piante (2006) state “…there is a strong evidence that relationships with adults in these [high school] settings are among the most important predictors of success” (p. 60). One way of doing this could be something simple as asking how the students weekend was when they walk into the classroom or asking them how the project went in their other class (Hamre & Piante, 2006). If teachers connect with their students on a level that allows students to feel comfortable teaching them, then hopefully students will have greater success in what they do.

“Active for Life”

My last and most important goal as an educator is to instill being “active for life.” As educators, we have an impact not only inside the school but outside as well. My goal is to teach students about the importance of physical activity and how it can be transferred outside of the school into the students every day life. Many students do not enjoy physical activity because they haven’t found something they are interested in. By giving students many options in the class of different physical activities they can do, the more likely they are going to continue being active outside of the classroom.