Professional Portfolio

NASPE Standard 1
Standard 1: Demonstrates competency in motor skills and movement patterns needed to perform a variety of physical activities.
Scientific and Theoretical Knowledge - Physical education teacher candidates know and apply discipline-specific scientific and theoretical concepts critical to the development of physically educated individuals.
Although I do not have documentation to post on here I have taken many classes that have given me knowledge in the motor skills. For example motor development, Anatomy and physiology 1 and 2, and Biomechanics, in the upcoming spring semester I will be taking motor behavior, and Exercise Physiology to help give me more knowledge.

NASPE Standard 2
Standard 2: Demonstrates understanding of movement concepts, principles, strategies, and tactics as they apply to the learning and performance of physical activities.
Skill and Fitness Based Competence - Physical education teacher candidates are physically educated individuals with the knowledge and skills necessary to demonstrate competent movement performance and health enhancing fitness as delineated in the NASPE K – 12 Standards.
This standard I feel was demonstrated in my squash lesson I put up index cards in tactical positions for the serve so the ball would land in good spots to win the point. I got these tactical ideas from my racket activities lesson where they teach us several affective serves.

NASPE Standard 3
Standard 3: Participates regularly in physical activity.
Planning and Instruction - Physical education teacher candidates plan and implement developmentally appropriate learning experiences aligned with local state, and national standards to address the diverse needs of all students.
This lesson plan that I used for teaching ice-skating is a great example of an implementation of Standard 3, but also provides fun examples of how to make ice skating easy and enjoyable for your students.

NASPE Standard 4
Standard 4: Achieves and maintains a health-enhancing level of physical fitness.
Instructional Delivery and Management - Physical education candidates use effective communication and pedagogical skills and strategies to enhance student engagement and learning.
In my short life all I have done is athletics. I live for and love being physically fit and hope that one day I will be able to inspire students suffering from obesity to do the same. I am currently registered for the 2010 NYC Marathon on November 7 where I will be running for the A Running Start foundation which raises money for Kenyan athletes who cannot afford to come to America for college. I also participate in triathlons and aspire to complete and Ironman in the summer of 2012. Here is a photo of me finishing my second sprint triathlon.

NASPE Standard 5
Standard 5: Exhibits responsible personal and social behavior that respects self and others in physical activity settings.
Impact on Student Learning - Physical Education teacher candidates utilize assessments and reflection to foster student learning and inform instructional decisions.

NASPE Standard 6
Standard 6: Values physical activity for health, enjoyment, challenge, self-expression, and/or social interaction.
Professionalism - Physical Education teacher candidates demonstrate dispositions essential to becoming effective professionals.
To enhance my professionalism in all aspects this semester I started working on my coaching skills with students that I do not know so it was more of a challenge. Previously I would go help out at my local High School and coach the distance team, many of the guys on the team now were either on the middle school teams or team mates of mine during my senior year so it is not that difficult to communicate with them. But as shown HERE I spent the fall semester coaching at homer high school. Cross Country was tough because I came in mid season and the coach was in the swing of it already. But before winter track started I met with the coach and discussed plans for the season and it is really working well with the athletes. So far the 3 girls that I work with have all had major Personal Best early on in the season so the future looks bright for the team at Homer. I will continue with this in the spring and next fall to try and really develop a relationship with the student-athletes and help them achieve not only their athletic goals but mainly their academic goals.
I also attended the NYS AHPERD Conference this past November which was absolutely amazing. I am always mesmerized when I leave those conferences due to the fact that I just never stop learning for the whole time I am there. It never stops. In this picture the presenter was an elementary school teacher and I did not realize until I tried that I was a little to big for to go under. Luckily the equipment was easy to put back together.
One other event that I took part in was the SUNY Cortland mini conference. I was a presider for the speed Speed Stackers.

IMMUNE STRENGTH

After playing the game immune attack, there was one thing that really jumped out to me about it. There is just way to much information being given to the player. When they were explaining the buttons I was having so much trouble remembering all of them. I also feel that the descriptions of the diseases were way to descriptive. A lot of the information seemed like it belonged in a high level high school class or even a beginner anatomy class. Another thought about the game is that it would require the teacher to have an advanced knowledge of biology. This is necessary because if a student has a question the teacher needs to be able to answer it and make sure the student understands. This game would probably fit best in a Biology teacher's lesson.
This was the ship that flew through the blood vessels. I had to drive it around trying to kill the diseases. That was pretty cool because learning to drive it was pretty tricky but once I somewhat understood how to guide the ship it was interesting.
This is a map of the blood vessels. When the commander would give me a mission the disease would pop up on the map and I would have to guide my ship through the vessels using the map for directions.

The lesson I thought would be good for a unit like this is body composition and exercising because to keep our immune system strong we have to stay healthy and fit. Teaching kids what the body is made of and how hard we have to work to lose weight.
Lesson Plan
10 Task Sheet
Activity Sheet
There is no answer sheet required for this activity as the students are graded on levels of creativity. As stated on the sheet I want my students to get a visual grasp of what the body looks like in terms of these 3 components.

A Little taste of a great Semester

The video says it all, all I can say is there is something happening here and it was a great semester thanks to the A-Listers aka the whole 255 class and especially Lab Assistants.

The First of 40

I have been coaching at Homer High School since the end of September. I started in the middle of cross country and am currently in full effect with winter track as we had our first meet last Saturday. I am loving coaching and plan on doing it for the next 40+ years. It allows me to impact students on a much more personal basis. It also is not as challenging because most of us all have the same goals. The reason why I say most is because some of the kids I coach really do not like to give their very best each and every day. That is my project for next semester. To have 100% commitment by each athlete on that team. I feel I have already started connecting to those kids because at the meet I was writing down their splits and when they were done breaking down the whole race and showing them where they can improve. The reason for this is now I am giving them something to think about to improve on in practice and races which in reality is increasing their effort without them even knowing. The thing I like best about this job is that I am training with the students and suffering through the workouts each day just like they do. Last Wednesday I assigned them 8x400 with 2 minutes rest and I really wanted them to hammer it. The Monday before I was explaining to them how they need to not only mentally but physically prepare for the workout and not bring excuses. They did exactly what I asked and brought a huge smile to my face after the workout. Everyone hit the exact splits that I asked and most importantly everyone was absolutely spent after. I really felt like for the first time in my short coaching tenure I did exactly what was planned to make these athletes better, not to mention I got a good workout in as well averaging 67.5 with the top guy. In high school it was always days like that, that would bring my teammates and I so much closer because we all wanted to accomplish the same thing and we all achieved it together.
To verify my winter track hours I had the head coach write a short letter to show that I have been helping out with the team.
I am looking forward to what the next 40 years have in store for me in the coaching world.

Vancouver or Bust

On Wednesday my final teaching experience went better than great. The reason I feel this was is because I had so much fun doing it. Skating around with music playing and the rest of my classmates was really fun. Although in my time coding sheet I did not receive the best score I was very close to all the required percentages so I was not that upset. The thing that really took a lot of time was class management. The reason for this is because there were some students who skated faster than others and also while I was giving instructions a few times students fell which caused a lot of attention and I also had to make sure the students were alright after they fell. It was very interesting looking at the sheet seeing how many different things I was doing in the lesson.
My favorite part of my lesson was the hook that I used. I am an avid fan of the Olympics and the minute I found out I had skating I had to put and Olympic twist on it, especially with one coming up this February. Also it was fun using professor Xavier Waddles Phd. to help me to teach. Jack helped me think of that scaffolding idea and it worked out perfectly. He will probably be used again sometime in the future.
My C9 score really gave me a boost. I really try not to base my lesson on the sheet because I just want to make the lesson flow and not really stress over hitting certain points. I did miss check for understanding but I did get one bonus point so I got a 20/20
I was very happy with how I gave my feedback. According to my feedback analysis sheet I said something at least once to everyone in the class. I had a feeling that I would be able to give a lot of feedback going into the lesson due to the setup of the students. I had them skating widths of the ice and I would just go down the line and talk to each student. Also I really try to work on staying away from words like "good". In my previous lessons I had used that excessively so I really focused on giving specific feedback. Although I did notice that I gave more specific feedback to the people who looked like they were having trouble, for example Jed who was excellent on the Ice got 3 congruent tallies and 1 specific tally. Martino, who was having a little more trouble, received 3 specific tallies and 1 congruent tally.
In terms of paper work I really tried to make my lesson plan better for Lab D. I had a pretty good feel of what I needed to do to improve so I think it went better this time around. I did make a cue change in the middle of the lesson. I added the arm cue in the middle because I noticed the students looked good with the true skating technique and I feel I needed to add another cue or it would have been to repetitive.
One thing that was wrong but not necessarily a big deal in my lesson was the last two activities. In terms of progressions I really should have put the free skate around the ice last and the train activity before it. The reason why I did this is because I wanted to end on what I felt was most fun for the activity and the train activity was definitely more fun for the students. Another problem that I really need to improve is the use of the word "guys". I say it way to much and I need to focus on saying class. I did happen to catch myself once but it is still a problem that needs to be worked on.

NYS AAHPERD

All I can say is wow. This is my second conference of career and all I can say is it just gets better and better. We arrived Thursday and were non-stop until Saturday morning.
Thursday we ventured into Dr. Walkuski's presentation and were really impressed about what he had to say. He really inspired me to take action on my professional development. He gave us a packet with ways to improve our marketability and networking status. The best part was that he gave us deadlines for each, so now we cannot just push away the paper. We have to reach our goals by our deadlines. What was very interesting was at the end of the session there was an administrator from Lockport who basically verified everything that was said in the presentation. He also talked about how intense the job market is. He said they have hired 4 teachers in 5 years and the last one they hired the school did not even advertise they had an opening and they received 125 applications which they then selected 20 for interviews and called back 6. That was scary to hear. It basically told me my resume has to be filled with such unreal achievements and then if I happen to be called for an interview I have 10 minutes to tell him why I am the best. It really opened my eyes.
Friday morning started with a bang as we went to the keynote speaker which was unreal. He was very personable as he spoke about spirit, mind, body and emotion. I really cannot describe it but I will give some quotes the man gave us. "To know and not to do is not to know", "You can have people healed but not cured, cured but not healed." and my personal favorite was "Humans are like tea bags, you do not know their strength until they are put into hot water." That one really moved me, it made me think about so many people that did so many great things when under pressure. For example, surviving cancer. That is the hottest water you can find and people who survive that have unreal strength. The next presentation did not go as well; Dr. Bailey's presentation was canceled due to illness (good thing shell be teaching me next semester so I wont be missing out to much). We instead went to watch Ryan Ingalls officially become President of the Future Professionals section of AAHPERD. They also had a free lunch which was a pretty good perk as well as a good raffle where I won a whistle. SUNY Cortland won majority of the prizes so we rubbed it in Brockport's face which was funny. We had a war of words all week. After that we went to a presentation by the NYS elementary teacher of the year. She was very good and we got a nice sized packet of awesome games to play which were very educational and had a lot of inter-task variation. She also told us how she incorporates her lesson's with the teacher's to include more educational task. The last presentation I went to was very interesting in terms of liability. A group of teachers from Rochester did a presentation on low budget games. The thing that was interesting about it is about 75% of the games they used involved a pegging or (dodge ball) style. They did stress safety saying you can only throw it underhand and only hit below the knees and if you hit above the knees you were automatically out. I asked one of them after about it and they felt that if they stress the safety they should be alright but I was still iffy about it and would hesitate if my administrators watched my class often. That night we went to the Jay B. Nash dinner and got a real good meal while watching some unbelievable people get teacher of the year awards. It was really cool to see this as this is what we are all striving to be.

Saturday morning I presided for a group from Syracuse who did a presentation call Food, Fun, Fitness. It was very good as they incorporated lifetime fitness and food into their games. Also on a side note they were advised by Dr. Sandy Bargainnier a former professor of our very own Professor Yang. Overall This was a phenomenal experience and I advise every P.E. major take advantage of such a great opportunity when they can.

My First State Qualifier

Yesterday at the Section 3 Cross-Country Champs we were very on edge going into the girls race. We knew that our top girl had a real shot to qualify for the state meet next weekend. She put tucked herself rite behind the leaders from the gun and made it her duty to stay with them. When she passed me at the 2k mark she looked pretty strong holding the last individual qualifying spot. I then sprinted across the field to catch her at the halfway mark of 2500m and gave her a few words of wisdom mainly saying "This is where the heart comes into play." I watched her go to the back loop and into the woods holding position, though it looked like people were closing on her. When she came back out peaking the muddy hill she still had the last spot in her grasp but there was one person closing on her and was within about 10m with about 600 to go. I got as close to her as I could and screamed at her that she has the spot and has to finish it now. She looked rite at me put her head down and went. Waiting for her to come down the final stretch was very nerve racking. Finally she came into the stretch with the same lead and I just got scared because there is nothing worse than getting out-kicked in the final 100m, especially when a spot to the state meet is on line. Finally with about 50m left she kicked it into overdrive and crossed the line for a 6th place finish and 5th after displacement of the team that won. Most importantly a free T-Shirt and a trip to Plattsburgh for the NYSPHSAA Cross-Country Champs. When I first saw her after the race she just said thank you to me and said that if I did not scream with 600 to go she may not have got it. That made me feel great about myself and made me realize that I really did have an effect on this athletes success. It makes me excited about the future and the next 40 years of coaching. I hope that this is the first of many state qualifiers and will hopefully lead to a Team Qualification and maybe even some hardware at the state meet.

The Tastiest Lab C EVER!!!!!

In Lab C, I feel we were really put in a more difficult situation being in the squash courts. I was really nervous going in that Professor Yang was going to throw us a few curve balls because we were not able to watch all 6 courts at the same time. Thankfully nothing went wrong and I was able to notice things before they got out of hand. As you can see in my Feedback Analysis Form, there were some things that I had to attend to. Mainly it was just people forgetting to wear their goggles which could have been a big problem if someone had gotten hit in the face without them on. One issue I had to attend to was on the last court where the students were horsing around on the court and not following the appropriate cues of the serve. I contained the situation and asked them kindly to follow the schedule sheet.
On to the rest my performance. I feel it was my best one yet and the numbers do not lie. As seen on my time coding sheet. My numbers were the best they have ever been. I improved drastically on my instruction time which was usually in the 40% range was 28% today. I feel like a spoke faster than normal but was still fluent and also I feel that the practice I did a few days before helped me weed out the unnecessary facts and sayings to bring down my instruction time. Also Another style that I used was that I explained everything first then sent everyone off to play. This allowed me not to worry about people having to go back and forth from courts and wasting time. All I had to do was blow my whistle and tell them to perform the next task on the schedule. That is one reason why although my task were different and progressively got more difficult, I tried to keep them similar so it would not take as much time to explain. The only flaw that I encountered was my management time which was 22%. I did expect this though due to the student having to walk out from court 1 to the court they were participating on and then walk back at the end.

Although I was skeptical about being on the observation deck but one positive thing that really benefitted me was my ability to give feedback. It was a lot easier being able to walk down the line and watch each person for a few moments then give them quick feedback. This allowed me to give feedback to every student in the class except one, which I was really happy about.

Overall I feel the strongest part of the lesson was 2 separate areas. One being my checking for safety. As I walked to each court I made sure everyone had their goggles on and the students that were not serving had their faces covered with their rackets. The second thing that I think went really well was the theme that me and Frank used. We used our cooking theme and made it last through the whole lesson. The best part was eating the squash after, I have to say I did a pretty good job cooking it.

The weakness of the lesson did not take place that day. Our Lesson Plan was not the strongest one made. I have to say, one positive of the lesson plan process was that I now have a much better understanding of the whole process thanks to our lab assistants. I really struggled due to it being the first one I have ever done but I intend on progressing to new heights in the future.

AMERICA

Sorry Professor, but this day belongs to the USA. Today I watched an American man win a race that has been dominated by the continent of Africa for the past 27 years. 27 years ago on the first Sunday in November Alberto Salazar won the NYC marathon and since that great day America has not broken the tape. It all changed today when Mebrahtom Keflezighi, otherwise known as "MEB", outdid the highest class field the New York Road Runners have ever assembled. Going into the race I did not even think Meb could be the top American finisher but the man just persevered today, he did not worry about the pack of 10 Africans that surrounded him at all, he just followed his rhythm and realized that they were not running out his league. Yes the guys next to him have Personal Best up to 5 minutes faster than Meb but in the rolling hills on Central park South its about who has the most guts and can still grind out those 4:55's 22 miles into the race. I never thought that I would see this day as it nearly brought a tear to my eye and forced me to go out and celebrate with a nice 50 minute run with some buddies. American distance running has slowly been rising up to the levels of the Africans with help from guys like "Ritz" and "Teg" but never has anyone done something like this and it is making a statement saying that we are not going be intimidated by these men who have dominated the sport for the past few decades. We are going to run shoulder to shoulder and if they do not want to make the move then we are going to and make them suffer. I hope that this leads to more great things to come and more publicity for the great sport of Distance Running.

DTRF

Last night I attended the desmoid tumor relief foundation's annual fundraiser which is run by a very good family friend of mine. This foundation is the only one in the world supporting desmoid tumors which is pretty cool considering my closest friends and family took part in building it. It was a very emotional night as there were many speakers, one being Ted Kennedy Jr., Who spoke about his fight with cancer and losing his leg. It was pretty cool to see a guy of such stature at a fundraiser that only started 4 years ago. But of course this got me thinking about P.E. in some way and just how this is one thing that we as Physical Educators cannot prevent with our skills tumors grow just out of sheer bad luck. It can happen to any of us at any point of our lives. I watched a woman stand on the stage last night and tell us the story about how her child, who was under the age of 4, died due to a Desmoid Tumor and it just made me think how lucky we are. This is why we all have to live our lives to the absolute fullest and be healthy and be able to conquer challenges. We cannot waste it sitting in front of our x-box yelling at the madden player because he dropped a pass. Just a little wake up call to those people. IT'S FAKE!!!!! We have to explore and push our selves until we cannot do it anymore. The reason for this is because one day, not by choice we will be forced to only think about those days and not actually be involved in them

THIS IS YOUR TIME!!!

First of all let me say Jack's use of Jimmy V. inspired this post. This is my favorite speech of all time. I use it in all aspects of life. I showed it to my fellow cross-country team members my senior year of high school and we thrived off of it winning the league title for the first time in years. I feel this is apart of teaching because we have an opportunity given to us by the "Old Phys Ed" teachers, the ones who just throw the ball out their and say see you in 45 minutes. We have to go out their and change the way physical education is going. In 1979-1980 the United States was in ruins and the Soviets were dominating the Cold War. But on a cold February 22, 1980 night 20 men from the USA changed the war for good and everything changed. Well this situation is going to look a little familiar in about 15 years when we look back on it. We have to get into the field and change P.E. so we can see people be healthier and live longer. We are working to hard to fail and as Herb Brooks states; "This is your time!!! So go out there and take it."

Mini Conference

So at the mini conference on 10/9/2009 I was a man of many trades. I was the head of the registration table which was pretty intense because we wanted to make sure Dr. Malmberg was happy. He really put a ton of work into this, so I tried to stress to my committee that they had to bring their A game. Luckily everything went very smoothly and we made A TON of money, more than double what we made last year. We will be able to use that money for the state conference which is great.
Now to Dr. Judy Rink, I tried to take as much as possible from her being that she created the text for 2 of the most important classes I will take in college. My favorite line that she had was "If you give them the skills, they will be active." That line just put a huge smile on my face and made me think wow, if we as PE teachers use great cues that sticks in the student's mind they will continue to use and remember these skills which will lead to more lifetime fitness. If we make it unique the students will never want to stop later in life. My friends and I in Suffern still today play Team Handball because my teacher Mr. Dempsey brought the game to new levels got the school addicted.
At the last 2 presentations I presided (seen in the photo above) for the sport stackers which was extremely fun to be a part of. That sport is awesome. If I had unreal coordination and super fast reactions I would definitely look into doing this. Sunnie, who is a freshman here, was 4th in the world in her age group so it was really cool to watch her move the cups up and down like it was nothing. I also got a t-shirt out of it so it really was a great day.

Stack em' up

Today in my teaching lesson (click for audio)we had to adapt to the outside and some of our throws were not as good due to the strong winds. I was not that worried about it because the stack did not involve many long throws so the weather seemed like it would not play a factor in my lesson. I was pretty excited and confident going in. Overall I think it went very well. As you can see in my transcription I had very strong cues. SAT seemed to be a big hit on the day which I was pretty happy about because when I thought of those cues I had a feeling they could be good.
My main weakness right now in my teaching seems to be introduction, I speak too much. It is difficult because I feel compelled to say all the information because in a regular class they will more than likely have no idea what I am talking about when I mention the stack. Luckily my fellow students have been playing for a while so it was easier to explain, but in a class it will be a different situation, so I am trying to simulate that. All together with my demonstrations and management they had to wait about 1 minute and 45 seconds before playing which is way too long. That is the main thing that I will definitely work on for the next lab. Other traits that I need to work on are better feedback. As seem on my feedback analysis form I give feedback to more than 50% of the class which is great. But on sheet you can see it is mostly general feedback. There needs to be more specifics in my feedback. I feel the reason for this is because everyone was moving so quickly and I wanted to make sure to get to everyone so I was just spitting out “Good job” to people. Instead I should say “Nice cut” or “You looked fast there”.

Strength that showed the most in this lesson was mainly my voice. My voice is my best characteristic. It was more difficult dealing with the outside and wind but I just raised my projection a little more. Another trait that I feel I am executing in using everyone’s name. In my feedback I made sure I addressed each person that I spoke to. I feel it is important to let the student know that they are excelling and by stating their name I am specifically telling them that they are performing well. Finally I just feel comfortable in front of the class. When I am up their I just feel like I belong there and was made to do this.

Lab 2

I felt that this short lesson went great. I was happy with my voice and ability to be short and sweet which is definitely necessary in a 4 minute lesson. As you can see in my transcription I did explain a tad to much which you can also see on my time coding sheet but I refrained from saying umm and like a lot. I also tried to incorporate what I have learned in class thus far. I feel very comfortable in front of the class and I am just having fun.

On a side note, I participated in an APEM event yesterday which was pretty fun. There were two freshman there who were helping us out. I was giving them advice with cues and other tactics. It was cool to be on the other side of the spectrum.

LAB A

In the first lab I feel that I was very relaxed and spoke clearly. I made sure to have a smile on my face so the students could see that I am passionate about what I am doing and they should be to. To make sure the students stay interested I will be sure to keep a smile on my face talk like I am excited and more importantly happy to be in class. Also I will not make it about me I will get the students involved so they can almost teach themselves and have more fun with it because the ball will be in their court. Although some things were not as good as I would have liked them to be I definitely thought it was a success.