Tag: PE

Cross-Country

The ridge-top trail.

There’s a trail that runs along the forested ridge above the school. With summer phasing into fall, and the smell of winter in the air, I decided to offer cross-country running as my P.E. option this quarter.

Just getting to the ridge-top is a strenuous jog up a steep slope (note to self: I need to get the geometry students to calculate the slope), especially with the thick, slippery layer of this fall’s accumulated leaves to test the unwary, and I was a little surprised that about half a dozen students actually took me up on it.

Climbing the steep, slippery, leaf-covered slope is not trivial.

Indeed a few more students have accreted onto our group since we started, casualties of the other P.E. options for the most part. But I’d like to think that the beauty of the wooded landscape — brilliant elm and sugar maple leaves littering the ground; crisp, cool air against flushed skin; the fresh, decisive smells in the ridge-top air; the crack an crackle of leaves underfoot — may have also attracted some attention.

I’m looking forward to observing how the slope and forest change with the coming winter.

Autumn sunlight parses the forest.

Talking Themselves into Depression

When it comes to approaches to solving problems, boys tend to think that talking isn’t particularly useful, while girls, who do prefer to talk things out, run the risk of talking themselves into depression.

When girls talk, they spend so much time dwelling on problems that:

it probably makes them feel sad and more hopeless about the problems because those problems are in the forefront of their minds [and]…makes them feel more worried about the problems, including about their consequences.

…In general, talking about problems and getting social support is linked with being healthy. [But it can be] too much of a good thing.

— Amanda Rose (2007) from the University of Missouri, Columbia, in Girls Who Complain About Their Problems At Greater Risk Of Developing Anxiety And Depression

Rose recommends that they, “engage in other activities, like sports, which can help them take their minds off their problems, especially problems that they can’t control.”

The Spirit of the Law

A You are the Ref strip by Paul Trevillion.

Every week, artist Paul Trevillon poses, in text and cartoon form, some truly idiosyncratic situations that might come up in a soccer match in his You are the Ref strip on the Guardian website. Readers get a week to propose their solutions and then referee Keith Hackett give his official answers.

It’s a fascinating series, the subtext of which is that, while there is a lot of minutiae to remember – the actual diameter of a soccer ball is important for one question – the game official is really out there to enforce the spirit of the laws, enabling fair and fluid play to the best of their ability. This is a useful lesson for adolescents who tend toward being extremely literal, and have to work on their abstract thinking skills, especially when they relate to questions of justice. For this reason, I find that when refereeing their games it’s useful to take the time during the game, and afterward in our post-match discussions, to talk about the more controversial calls.

Cricket

Cricket on the green. J. cuts the the ball toward the cameraperson who is sitting in the covers. Photograph by Sage Beasly, adapted by myself.

The weather has not been nice to our soccer pitch. There’s a bare patch in front of where we put the goals that kicks up a lot of dust when we play. But this also means that the ground is nice an smooth, making for a decent wicket. So we’ve been playing cricket.

I explained the rules and demonstrated batting and bowling, but the habits of a lifetime (even when you’re an early teen) are hard to shake. We’re going through a period where we’re playing an intriguing amalgam of baseball and cricket. Batters are currently straddling the crease with a baseball like stance, which works out pretty well for them at the moment because the bowlers are only just discovering that bouncing the ball makes it harder to hit.

Although I’ve tried to explain LBW, I’m not even going to try to get into some of the more wonderful terminology of the game. The BBC’s cricket Laws & Equipment and Skills pages are quite detailed.

Social Loafing Update: The Student Perspective

I presented my post on social loafing as a Personal World lesson. For the rest of the week students are supposed to reflect on their own habits, and think about when and why they loaf and how to avoid doing so.

We had a good discussion during the lesson. We’ve had a few obvious examples of social loafing over the year with soccer. We started off with one person versus the rest of the class, and every time one of the teams wins two games in a row, the losing team has to pick someone from the winning team for the next game.

In the first few games, the smaller team played their hearts out and was able to hold it’s own remarkably well, but as the year progressed, and students improved their technique and teamwork, the greater numbers began to tell. But as the teams grew it was pretty clear that some of the people who were working really hard before, were taking it easy.

So students are going through the list of reasons why people socially loaf and reflecting on which apply to themselves. Of course when I went over the list during the lesson, I asked if there were any other reasons they could think of based on their own experience. Our resident expert in social loafing had a very Montessori suggestion about why a student might “seem to be” loafing during group work, “What if you want the other students to learn more?”

Luring vultures

The theme for this term’s Independent Research Project is Life on the Nature Trail, and my students are required to do some actual field work on the species or taxonomic group they’ve chosen to investigate. One students chose vultures because they saw one in the clearing just outside the trail and we’ve occasionally caught sight of one soaring over the campus.

He’s been trying to lure one in for a closer look.

Since I’ve vetoed the idea of leaving fresh meat out, unless he finds professional to guide him, he’s asked for permission to lie out on the grass pretending to be carrion.

I let him take the camera (see above).

Today we saw one swoop past during P.E., so we took a couple minutes trying to lure vultures (see below).

Unfortunately, it did not seem to work.

Mercenaries on the playing field

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

– A.E. Housman

Three themes converged on the playing field today; poetry, competitive sports and video war games. We’d used Alfred Houseman’s “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries” for a lesson on OULIPO yesterday because it’s short and one of my small groups had presented a week ago so we were all familiar with the poem. We’d been trying post-games discussions after frizbee (and soccer) to learn sportsmanship. We’d been having issues with video games and the definition of the word “duty“. I’ve long suspected (and would love to find a study that looks into this) that video game players are more likely to give up when the odds are against them because they are so used to just restarting the game (or respawning).

Today at the end of our post game discussion, I recited Epitaph to highlight the strength of character shown by some of the players who put up a great comeback despite part of their team stopping playing. It was a serendipitous convergence of three themes we’ve been dealing with this entire cycle (if not the whole year). It was a moment when I really appreciated being able to be so engaged with all parts of the curriculum.

Sportsmanship

“Winning is the easy part, losing is really tough. But, you learn more from one loss than you do from a million wins. You learn a lot about sportsmanship. I mean, it’s really tough to shake the hand of someone who just beat you, and it’s even harder to do it with a smile. If you can learn to do this and push through that pain, you will remember what that moment is like the next time you win and have a better sense of how those competitors around you feel. This experience will teach you a lot on and off the field!” – Amy Van Dyken

Sports bring out the best and the worst in us. In victory and defeat. When the competitive fires burn fiercest they strip away facade and open windows into the soul. We’ve been playing Ultimate Frisbee on and off all year for PE and like it because it offers, in a microcosm, a remarkable view into the character of my students. Subtle behaviors in the classroom get magnified on the playing field; the willingness to quit when the score is against you versus the quiet perseverance no matter what happens. Yet, if the way we act when we play sports reflects the our character, then perhaps we can shape our character by changing the way we act when we play. That’s what “they” mean when they say that playing sports builds character.

“How a man plays the game shows something of his character; how he loses shows it all.”
-Tribune (Camden County, GA)

I’ve also come to realize that team sports can work as a substitute for co-operative games if I insist on a half-time team talk and a post game discussion by the whole group. The half-time talks are turning into pep talks and the post-game talks are proving very useful. I choose someone at random to give the talk.

There are times when you’re tired and times when you don’t believe in yourself. That’s when you have to stick it out and draw on the confidence that you have deep down beneath all the doubts and worries.” -Jim Abbot

I have not had many post-match group talks, but I am rectifying that. After each game, the group need to address some reflective questions:

  • What worked?
  • What was challenging?
  • How did you feel?
  • What did you learn?

Once again, we practice reflective thinking, although this time it’s for the group as well as the individual. We’re building abstract thinking skills as well a character, and hopefully, they both reinforce each other.

“The answers to these questions will determine your success or failure. 1) Can people trust me to do what’s right? 2) Am I committed to doing my best? 3) Do I care about other people and show it? If the answers to these questions are yes, there is no way you can fail.” –Lou Holtz