After Tuesday’s class I thought about the question, “Do I need to be an ‘expert’ to teach PE?” and although I think perhaps my answer would have previously been a yes, my thinking is changing in this area. I saw the ways that Group 1 did their team teach, as new teachers, and coming from varying backgrounds of physical education or physical literacy. The ways in which they tackled the objectives, came up with many different ideas to help us learn target games and have fun while we did it made me see that you don’t need to be an expert in PE, but perhaps just an expert teacher. To me, that means being open to learning, taking risks and overcoming challenges in order to educate learners. In my case, I am open to learning how to teach PE and I think many of us feel like it will be a stretch out of our comfort zone. As we have learned, it is entirely too common among educators to shy away from teaching PE for the very same fears many of us probably share. Seeing Group 1 dive head first in to teaching a PE lesson was really encouraging and motivating for me.

It also made me think of the many ways in which movement can be joyful, as one of our guiding questions asked. There is joy in movement and sharing those experiences of movement with others. And that idea doesn’t necessarily have to only be applied to team sports. I think we all experienced, during our target games lesson, how fun and joyful it was to learn a skill together, practice together, support one another, motivate one another and share small victories (even if it was just hitting a disc with a bean bag!). I am excited to expand my understanding of PE, as well as my students’, and to build my confidence about being qualified to teach it.