Chapter 1 was great!

Getting in the Groove

Three weeks worth of teaching are in the books and we are all getting louder, smoother, and more comfortable. We all are interacting more with the kids in a more natural way and it’s not as forced as it was in week one. We are now beginning to find our steps in the gym and before long we will have our own swagger. I wasn’t able to get to my game this week, but I was able to really help out my fellow group members with theirs and I was more than willing to since I played both my games for a while the first two teachings. I can’t wait to see what the next few weeks have in store for us and I’m sure that it will only get better from here!

Finding Your Voice

As our second lab week at St. Mary’s has come and gone, many of us that may have struggled with the first week have started to find our voice. Many of us started to really control the group instead of having them run amuck. As teachers we will constantly be looking to break through to our students and really peak their interest about physical activity, and St. Mary’s is no different. This week I had a young boy tell me “playing the college kid games sucks” and through talking to him I was able to redirect that negative energy and had him help me to design an activity that he would love to play. Getting over the initial shock of the school was easy, now it’s time for us to start fine tuning our skills and get these kids to count down the days until we come back. They will do this, because we are so much fun and have original exciting activities that they will want to play again and again.

Spring Fever...

Don’t get me wrong, I am one of the biggest snow sport enthusiasts you will ever meet. But there comes a time every winter where we all are ready for those outdoors activities that don’t involve twenty layers. Well the spring bug officially bit me, and the only thing to do was call up one of my good friends who happens to be member of the Navy Golf Team and we hit the road. We drove out to Turning Stone resort to the golf dome and sporting complex for a few hours of golfing. At this range there is a two tier driving range with multiple targets, putting greens, chipping greens, and a full virtual simulator to play hundreds of courses around the world. This oasis in the frozen tundra known as central New York is just a taste of what we have to look forward to in a few months. The dome gives you a chance to let your swing loosen back up while there is still snow falling on the greens outside. While there I was able to take video to analyze my swing later in a biomechanics software program and I have embedded a few of the samples to give you an idea of what this range really has to offer. So if there are any avid golf fans out there I highly suggest you check this place out to get you through those long cold months. 

Teachers Still Learn

Working as a snowboard instructor at Labrador Mtn. I come in contact with a wide variety of people on a day to day basis. Everyone from entire families, young children, and people from all different career paths. This past week I had the opportunity to teach a group of college students that were all education majors and came to the mountain to learn something new that they could use to relate to their students. This made me think, that more of our own physical education majors need to be getting out in the community and trying new activities that they could in turn pass on to their own future students. We have many students here at Cortland that have never experienced any of the outdoor activities this area has to offer, and that is a shame. There is a multitude of activities that are not only enjoyable, but also have excellent psychomotor and cognative skills associated with them. We all need to be expanding our "bag of tricks" and get involved in some of these activities and share our experiences with students. Needless to say the group had a great time and learned a lot, and hopefully one of them might pick up the sport as a lifetime activity that they will carry with them forever.