Hey Gang,
Major storm in the forecast tomorrow for all of Nova Scotia, they have already cancelled school pre-meditated. I’ll have to get out for a workout tomorrow and shovel my driveway. Hope my fellow teachers get a snow day as well.
I loved this week’s reading, Healthy Bodies: Construction of the Body and Health in Physical Education. It directly relates to me as a physical educator and some of the experiences I’ve had in my tenure as a PE teacher. Throughout the reading the authors touch on the ideal of slim/fit body= healthy individual. In my own personal experience as a PE educator I know that this theory is false. In some cases I have students who are “ripped”, at face value they look physically fit and “healthy”, I think back to 2013, I had a student named Marco, by looking at Marco you would think he was physically fit, healthy and worked on his physical fitness and overall health daily Well in fact, Marco was an avid smoker, type 2 diabetic and constantly made bad diet choices in our school cafeteria. This is just one example of a student who physically displayed as a healthy individual but in fact wasn’t. I feel pressure at times as a physical educator to maintain a “healthy physique”, I recently gained some weight and like in previous posts I discussed my “dad bod”. My wife constantly said “how can you be a physical education teacher and not be fit yourself?” This annoyed me so much but at the same time is a valid point, it made me change my bad eating choices and I got back to my fighting weight lol
The studies done in Sweden and Australia were eye opening for me. The correlation between constructing a healthy body and the access to resources or lack thereof was interesting. The concern of the heat and sun in Australia as well as the age of the physical educator plays a factor in performance of the student. Skin cancer becomes a factor when exposed to the sun and the average age of the educators in the study was declining which inhibited the teacher’s ability to properly educate. As I get older I like to think that my program and my teaching gets better. Where I teach in Dartmouth NS, we have access to a ton of different resources. The Dartmouth Sportsplex, which houses a pool and a rink, the Dartmouth Common is a huge soccer and baseball field that neighbours our school and we built a track around our school that I constantly use for our class warm ups. This is a great asset for my students and me as a teacher. The benefits of having these resources accessible makes my PE program very diverse and beneficial for all of my students.
Overall, I enjoyed the reading and discussed some of the valuable points that I found interesting, The study was unique and gave a different perspective as it was done in different countries.
Below is an aerial shot of my school, you can see the beautiful Dartmouth Common and in the top right you can just barely see the Dartmouth Sportsplex.
