Cortland Dance Company Recital

This past weekend was the Cortland Dance Company Recitals, and I must admit that they both went absolutely amazing. All of the dancers did a great job with their dances and I could not be more proud to be part of a company! We had all types of dances from hip hop, jazz, lyrical, step, irish step, tap, and so much more! I want to thank everyone who came out to support us! We had two awesome crowds who really cheered us on! Below will be some pictures from some of the dances!


Sirens:

Step In Time (from Mary Poppins)

 Fake ID (from Footloose):

Rolling in the Deep:

 Thank you Cortland Dance Company for an amazing semester at Cortland. Congratulations to all of the seniors! You girls are going to do great with all that you do after graduation!

What To Expect Now?

As April 23rd was my last PED 201 lab at Saint Marys, I had a lot of fun, and learned more than I ever thought I would about the students. This semester has made me grow a lot as a teacher candidate! I cannot wait to continue on in my journey next semester with EDU 255 and doing middle and high school observations over the winter for EDU 256! I would like to thank all of my peers, Professor Yang, our lab assistents, and everyone at Saint Mary's for making this semester such a success for me! Below are few of the most important things that I have learned throughout this semester. I enjoyed each and every lab, but some moments for course stood out more than others. 

Young children are extremely interesting in so many ways. They are the most creative at everything they do. They can make walking across the gym into a wild adventure through a rainforest where you are being chased by lions! I love being around younger children because it lets me be creative as well. Elementary students love when you make scenarios for them to act out. Middle school and high school students are not as fun to do things like this with! They do not get into it. Games that are appropriate are games that allow students to be creative. For example, today in lab we were doing parachute games and Steve had the students tell him what they wanted to add to our soup (being balls thrown into the parachute). One of the little boys next to me tugged on my shirt and I leaned down to hear that he wanted to add Macaroni and Cheese to our soup! Who else would think of macaroni and cheese in soup besides a elementary aged student! Games that are not appropriate are the ones that again they will not understand. Any game that will take more than two minutes to explain is probably a game that they will not understand. Games with little rules are perfect. The more rules the less understanding. 

All of the students favorite games are with the parachute. Bringing the parachute to the last lab was the best idea I think from the entire semester. The participation we had was incredible. We could play simple games with them, but they would have so much fun with them. Games were as simple as saying if you were holding blue run under the parachute and grab a new color on the outside! The students had a blast with the giant parachute. They could have stayed there for hours just lifting it up and down making waves.

I love the Pre K program at Saint Mary’s. It is perfect for the age group. They have time where they can run around and get their energy out, but at the same time have time to relax, and settle down. For the most part they were the most well behaved students. They listened to every word you were saying and always tried to follow the rules. When they were not following the rules it was because they did not understand them. When older children do not follow the rules it is normally because they are bored and are going to cause trouble. I did enjoy working with this age group on the day I was assigned to them however I do not know if I could do it all of the time because sometimes I do not have the patience to explain myself a hundred times, and you do that every day with the Pre K room.

I am eager to move on to observe older students, and actually get into a teaching environment rather than a after school program. I again have enjoyed this semester more than any other and I know this is just the beginning of a great journey to becoming a physical educator! I am not sure what to expect from the middle and high school students because my experiences with children of these ages are at a sleep away camp.  A school and camp setting are two very different things for children. I do not want to go into these observations with the expectations that I do with my campers because naturally when children are at camp they act much different than they would in school. 

Again I want to thank all of my peers, Professor Yang, our lab assistants and the staff and students of Saint Mary's Elementary School. 

This is a highlight reel from my experiences throughout the past semester in PED 201! Hope you enjoy!

Beautiful Day For Building

It was a wonderful lab where every single person, students and my fellow college students were more than excited and ready to play! The enthusiasm was showing through everyones actions the second we walked into Saint Marys on April 16th. 


Last Monday the Physette's were the gym group! We were very excited to finally have this section and were even more happy that it is the last place we will teach! I was very happy with our performance in lab because the students seemed to be extremely into our games. Some got a little bored in the games where they were just standing around or dribbling back and forth down the court. I liked my game a lot because it was a mix of sports I knew students would enjoy. "Socketball" was a combination of soccer and basketball where students can dribble the all with either their hands or feet and score either a basketball hoop or soccer goal. Putting certain restrictions of the game are a good idea as well to help control the amount everyone plays. 




Once we were done in the gymnasium we went down to the cafeteria with the students and were playing with the legos! I had a challenge with one boy who did not think I could build a five foot tall tower of blocks. Although he was correct, I took the challenge, and worked long and hard on my tower that ended up being a crazy one foot tall. It was interesting to see all of the students creativity at work because we do not get to see it as much when in the gymnasium having them play our games. We really get it when we give them some free space to come up with their own ideas. Some of the girls were making pageant stages out of the legos while some of the guys were creating crazy looking cars, boats, and airplanes. 




Click here to read my Lab 5 assessment!

Math, Reading, and Physical Education?

In lab on April 9th we were in the Exergame room. This was a whole new world introduced to me. I am extremely impressed with the amount of activities there were and how much you could do with them. Each game gives you multiple options to keep the entire room moving rather than 4 or 5 students. Technology never seizes to amaze me in physical education. There are activities for students of all ages that will hold their interest for an entire physical education class. The dance game was one of these games that could keep students moving for hours on end. I really liked how it let everyone pick their own level of difficulty rather than a general level for everyone. This lets students challenge themselves as they want rather than forcing them to either play a less or more advanced version of the game for their personal ability. Each person can set the level based on their ability without affecting anyone else's game. 


The Exergame Lab is filled with a bunch of fun games for students of all ages and abilities. The kick boxing game being one of the best! I would use this game in middle schools and high schools especially with all students of all abilities. This game gives students no excuses at all to not be participating in any way that they want. For example, if a student has a broken leg, give them a padded pole to hit the targets on the punching bag. Students who are not up to the punching bag can use the dance mats in the background or even punch anad kick as if they had a bag in front of them. There are many ways of using the different games in the Exergame lab. Meeting the CEO of Exergaming was really nice too because he could answer any questions that we had! I like that we can use our own music for the games because everyone exercises to different music. In a class you can have each student pick on song and make a play list to go through in each class. Also, it gives you a bigger variety of songs to use rather than the slim selection Dance Dance Revolution gives us. 

The biking game is interesting as well. There are two different versions aimed for students of different ages. I played the one aimed towards elementary students, and still had a great time! We played it where one person was using their arms to spin the peddles of the bike while the other person was steering. Again this brought education into the classroom because instead of just riding a bike around a track, there were different problems, letters, or numbers that we had to collect. The level we played was aimed more for kindergarten and younger. We did letter and number identification. This game again gets students to work on other subjects while being physically active. It can work the same way as the dance or kick boxing games do where you can set up other bikes in the background and have students biking as well. If there are not enough bikes for every student to have their own, then pair them up and have one peddle and one steer!


There are other great games that would perfect for elementary aged students. One in particular is hyper dash. Pre-schoolers can use this game to practice their colors and numbers. First and second graders can use it to practice their adding and subtracting. Third grade through fifth grade can use this game to practice multiplication and division. This game is great because it can incorporate physical education with other classes. Students will be more willing to learn if they are not just sitting there being told to do 5 math problems on their paper. This game allows of students to do some critical thinking while moving around. Some ways of using this game could be to set the answer "plates" around the room and students listen for the question and then run, gallop, skip, lead, etc. to the answer around the room. Using hyper dash is a great way to incorporate other subjects into physical education. 

Cortland Dance Company Activities!

First, on Friday April 13th Cortland Dance Company surprised everyone with a Flash Mob in Neubig Dining Hall. We performed to We Found Love by Rihanna. The surprise seemed to cause some excitement throughout the dining hall when two of the girls stood on top of their chairs dancing. Being apart of this Flash Mob was a great experience for me. I had a lot of fun with the girls I spend the most time with. It was a wonderful bonding experience for all as well! And I can happily say I can cross "Being apart of a Flash Mob" off my list of things to do before I die! 

Last night, Cortland Dance Company performed at Relay for Life in the ice arena of Poolside. All of the girls did an amazing job during the performance. However, that is not all we did! We took part in every event that we possibly could including three-legged races, pudding eating contests, and playing Just Dance. I am so proud of everyones enthusiasm during this event last night. We also taught our flash mob performance to all participants who were willing to learn a fun quick dance! At the end of the night our team even won an award for never giving up! It was nice to see all of our enthusiasm did not go unrecognized. We are an amazing group of girls who love to have fun. None of us care about embarrassing ourselves while having as much fun as we can together and that goes a long! I truly am more than glad to be part of Cortland Dance Company and love all of the great times we all have together!

Performing Rolling in the Deep!

Teaching the Flash Mob!

If you want to see some of the amazing dances that we do, come see us perform at Cortland High School Friday April 27th at 6:00pm or Saturday April 28th at 12pm. Doors open an hour before the performances start! These shows are worth taking the time out of the day to see! Tickets are $5 in advanced and $7 at the door! Hope to see you all there! If you have any questions about the recitals feel free to email me at lauren.garbarino.pe@gmail.com 

All who performed at Relay for Life! Great job to all!

Embarrassing and Fun

In PED 201 this past week we all had a great experience by performing our Infant Development Skits LIVE at Poolside. Although it was a bit embarrassing to get up infront of my peers and teachers, I had a lot of fun with my group performing our song. Check out the Physettes' original video below! 

We had Chapter 5 in our text which is about Prenatal Birth Defects, and how everything a mother does effects her unborn child! The lyrics are shown throughout the song incase there are some areas where you could not hear them! Hope you enjoy!


Good job to everyone who performed. Hope you all had as much fun as I did! 

Here are some fun pictures from our live performance!

Check out the other Physettes' blogs as well!

Kendra

MK

Christina

Bulletin Board and Teddy Bear Games at St. Marys!

This past week lab 4 took place. We were the special projects group this week, and I personally was in charge of the bulletin board. I am extremely happy with how my first ever bulletin board came out at Saint Mary's! Our group also had to do the closing game, song/dance, and cheer. Overall I believe we all worked well together this week. I believe that the game however was a bit inappropriate for the mix of ages that we had. Playing rocks paper scissors tag with the students would have been better if it was played with students around the game age. The 5th graders were beating the pre-school students every round of the game, and it did discourage the younger students. Also, we all need to remember to give safety statements before our games and keep reminding students what they can and cannot do throughout the game! During rock paper scissors tag some of the older students were slapping the college students and some pre-school students which was extremely inappropriate and we were lucky none of the younger students got hurt because of this. Part of our job as future physical educators is to make sure that every single student goes home without any injuries. 

After we had finished the putting the bulletin board up, I played jump rope with some of the girls ranging in ages from 1st grade to fifth grade. They taught me two new games that I had not previously heard of! The first game is a song called "Teddy Bear." 


"Teddy bear teddy bear turn around
Teddy bear teddy bear touch the ground
Teddy bear teddy bear go upstairs
Teddy bear teddy bear say your prayers
Teddy bear teddy bear turn out the lights
Teddy bear teddy bear say goodnight"


The second game was called the "Grade Game." One person at a time would run through the turning jump rope without getting hit or stopping the rope from turning. If you do that successfully then you have moved up a grade. It starts with kindergarten and goes all the way through college. However, if you do not get through the rope you then start back at kindergarten. The first person to make it through college wins the game!! Both of these games kept the girls busy and they enjoyed playing them over and over again until we were called in to do final games. 



In gym group did an excellent job at keeping the students interested in their games! This surprised me a lot because this was the first time we really saw games where we had to end the game before the students got bored and ended the game themselves. The garbage can game was a perfect example of this. They let the students go on playing this game for about 10 minutes, but they then had to close the garbage can, and move onto other games. It was nice to see that some of us were having success with the games we plan. 

Christina, MK, myself, and Kendra during Lab 4!

Remember to check out my Lab 4 Assessment sheet!

Reporting On The Great Debate

The Great Debate 2012 started out with yours truly, ME, with an opening statement about the awesome debate that was about to start! The New York State's Board of Education (Ryan, Mallory, Luke, and Dave) were here to determine the new physical education curriculum for New York State. Three groups would present their arguments, anad explain why have the right idea for the new curriculum. 

Sticks in Sports, Lifetime Activities, and Skill Based Sports all made some great arguments. Although it seemed as if everyone seemed a bit timid at the beginning, once rebuttals started, everyone the debate got extremely heated. Every group was fighting their hardest to have their curriculum picked by the Board of Education. 

The final decision however was a tie between Skill Based Sports and Lifetime Activities. Sticks in Sports made some great arguments, but unfortunately came up a bit short in the vote! Again, great job to all of our debaters, the board of education, and reports! It was a very successful day in Motor Development.

 One suggestion that I would make for future debates such as this one is to make it two class periods long because it seemed like it was very rushed. The debaters did not have enough time to get all of their points in and seemed to make them all a bit more nervous. 


Check out the rest of the tweets, and some video clips from the debate here!

Olympics, Boomba, and Games OH MY!

Wow was this weeks lab different! I was very nervous going into Lab 3 because my group worked with the Pre-K students! I was not sure what to expect because they are a hard group. They are young and normally want to do what they want, and not listen to others. 


This weeks theme was sports! I decided that I wanted to use the Olympics for the theme of the craft for the Pre-K students. I had them make their very own Olympic medals! When we walked over to the classroom from the gymnasium, and looked into the classroom I was immediately alarmed because their were about 20 students to start the day! I was told to plan for at most 15. This means I only had 15 medals! Luckily I had printed out Olympic  color sheets for the students, and this worked out well because some choose to do color instead of making the medals. I was a little surprised at first by the students who did not want to make a medal, but also felt a sense of relief because I did not want to be the person to tell them that we had no more medals! The craft ended up working out perfect. No mess and lots of fun for them! As students started to leave they all ran up to their parents showing them their awesome new medals, and you could see the excitement in their expressions.


Next Kendra read them a book that she brought. The kids LOVED it. The book was about penguins, Flip and Flop. They played a game called boomba in the book, and every time the students heard Kendra say boomba, they would then scream BOOMBA on the top of their lungs and starting laughing uncontrollably. They were all so excited for the book, they asked her to read it again when she was done! 


After snack, I got to read the students a book because we had a little bit of extra time before they got to go into the gymnasium. It was the simplest book I think I have ever seen, but again the excitement on their faces every time I asked them a question about the train was great! They wee all so enthusiastic about the books, and again this surprised me a lot. I was happy that they liked the books so much, and this settled them down a little for when we did go into the gymnasium. They were ready to listen to the explanations of the games and to play! 


Once we got to the gymnasium, the students would listen to our instructions however they did not follow them too well. For MK's game, they were supposed to listen to the locomotor skill that they were to perform, and do that over the jump ropes laid out on the floor. However, this turned into them sprinting across the course, rather then doing the locomotor skills. It was funny to see some them try to do the skills at first because they would try and hop and stumble a little, but try to hide it. 


Overall, I enjoyed working with the Pre-K students a lot more than I thought I would. They were so energetic and fun. It took a little bit of adjusting, but it really was an enjoyable day at St. Mary's!

Remember to check out my lab 3 assessment!

TEACHers Hall of Shame

The Hall of Shame in Physical Education show cases games that are outdated, unsafe, and boring today in physical education classes. As a physical educator our job is to teach. What are we teaching students by telling them to go play tag, red rover, or simon says (all are included on the most recent list in the Hall of Shame)? Every single child has played this games hundreds of times before they step foot in our classes and truth be told they are bored of them. If they want to play these games they have time to do that on the play ground. Again, as teachers our job is to teach, so why are we not teaching new games? Sure there are hundreds of modified games of tag but in the end it is still a game where part of the class is being chased and tagged while the rest of doing the chasing and the tagging. No matter what the name of the game is (Temple Tag, Doctor Doctor, Cops and Robbers) it is essentially still a game of tag! 


Some teachers will argue that tag can be used to assess students in locomotor skills. I agree that tag can be used however it is not the only way to assess students. If students are bored of the game they are less likely to play or do skills to their full potential, so while you are assessing them during tag, you are not assessing their full ability. Once students are bored they begin to start trouble and/or want to sit out. The easiest way to sole this solve this problem is to eliminate the games that make students cause trouble. Of course it will not solve all the problems within class, but it will eliminate all of the unnecessary sitting and trouble caused by boredom. The only logical spot for tag in a physical education class is as a warm-up for students. Even then it should be a modified version where no student is ever standing still because once you tire students out a bit, they are in the palm of your hand for the rest of the class. 


Physical education is a place to get students moving actively. Statistics have proved that 50% of students will fully participate during a game of tag.  Statistics have also shown that 90% of those students who are fully participating are the students who need it the least. 10% of those fully participating are those students who need the activity the most. This shows that something needs to change. No classroom should only have 50% of students fully participating! That is ridiculous. I believe that statistic is a full representation on what the teacher is doing in their classroom. Tag is not a game for physical education anymore. It has seen its better days. By introducing new games students will overall participate much more and that includes students who need the activity along with student who do not need it as much. 


Tag can be described as a game that enhances a child's motor skills, locomotor skills, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Again, yes I agree tag will do this, but only for the five students left playing the game by the end of class. Students are sitting around in class all day; why do we not give them a place to run around and have fun without boring them with these Hall of Shame games. 


According to the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, their are six standards that physical education should be following explaining how a physically educated student should act and what they should know. Click here to view these standards. Not one of these six standards are demonstrated in a classroom that is involved in playing tag. 


Standard 1: 
Students cannot demonstrate their efforts during tag if they are bored of it. They are most likely not going to play to their full ability, and as a teacher you will never know if that is their full ability. 


Standard 2:
Again how are we to know if students understand concepts, strategies, or principles if they are not fully participating?


Standard 3:
Students are bored therefore not participating in regular physical activity.


Standard 4:
Without participation students are not achieving or maintaining any level of physical fitness.


Standard 5:
By being bored and not participating, students are going cause trouble and start problems therefore not demonstrating responsibility or respect for others in this setting. 


Standard 6:
If a student is bored, and not enjoying the classroom, then they are most likely not going to value physical activity in any way at all. 


Again all of these standards come down to the participation and interest of the students. Without their interest, even though they are physically educated, they are not showing it through the six standards outlined by the NASPE.

Our main goal is to make sure students are 

having fun while staying physically active.

See what other games are included in the Hall of Shame for physical education.

Dancing Through the New Year

On November 19th, 1992 I was born. 19 years later, on November 19th, 2011 my 18 year old cousin, Sarah, was involved in a fatal car accident which killed her. Sarah has always been my inspiration to stay active through dance. She fought through a lot during her life. We both had been dancing for 15 years at that point. I stopped when I graduated high school until January 2012. Sarah’s death has opened my eyes to a whole new light within dance, and I could not imagine a better way to remember Sarah besides through dancing. Sarah was an amazing lyrical dancer while I have always been more hip hop ad jazz. I have always wanted to try lyrical, and Sarah is my inspiration to succeed and try new things since the being of this year.

For my Motor Development class this semester we were asked to enter a contest where we would make a video and enter it into a contest. The video was to be about a healthy new year's resolution. My healthy new year's resolution is to start dance again in memory of Sarah. In addition to talking about our resolution we must explain how we use technology to help us keep this resolution.

Dancing involves a lot of technology. Besides the obvious communication through email and texting, we just Facebook to stay connected. Facebook is great because it gives everyone a chance to see what is going on, and keeps everyone involved in the conversations. Anyone can post on it to give their ideas for new dances, costumes, or any other ideas they may have. Each choreographer has a group set up for their specific dance, and this way we can keep our dance separated and easier to talk about. Facebook is the easiest way to keep in touch with everyone to have a group discussion.

Another big part of dance is video taping practices to help see where our mistakes are. It is extremely important to dance to be together and stay on beat, but it is also very hard especially when you have people of all different skill levels like the Dance Company. We tape practices and analyze them to see what parts of the dance we need to work on. 

Below is my video submission. Please click here to vote for my video. It would really mean a lot to me and my family. I am dancing on for Sarah and will continue to dance on forever. Thank you all!

Where Is My Valentine?

This weeks lab theme was Valentine's Day. We began in the gym with all of the students and assessing one boy and one girl on their run, gallop, and hop. The activities that the gym group led seemed to keep the students at Saint Mary's interested, and incorporated Valentine's Day very well. My lab group was the cafeteria group however since it was a nice day outside, the older students went out to the playground during the time that we were supposed to teach our games. Instead we decided to play the games that the students wanted to play, and in turn they ended up playing our games when we went into the gymnasium later. While outside I asked one of the girls why she was not participating in the game of tag on the play ground. She replied by saying that the boys sometimes would make fun of the way she ran. I reassured her that she should not be scared to have fun, and that if I heard anyone say anything to her I would have them stop. After a few minutes of talking to her and helping her with her run, she entered the game, and not one person said anything to her! 

After the playground, we went into the gymnasium with the older students (3rd to 5th graders). Even though the older boys did not seem interested at first in playing MK's game (Where's My Valentine?) once they began to play you could tell from their actions that they were having fun! I originally was suposed to play a game with students that did not take a lot of space, but since we were in the gymnasium, I changed my game to play a game like handball. Students could either play the ball on the ground and shoot at the little nets on the ground or shoot it like a basketball at the basketball nets. At first not too many students seemed interested in playing, but by the end of activity almost all of the students in the gymnasium were on our side playing my game.

Overall I believe lab was a lot of fun and a successful day. We got to play with the students doing both our games and theirs. It seemed like the students had a lot of fun as well. Next week Kendra, MK, Christina, and I are in the pre-k room. It is going to be a much different experience than having the older students, but I am excited to see how well we do with the pre-k group!

Remember to check out my Lab 2 assessment as well!

We Are Who We Are

This is the link to Kendra, MK, Christina, and my lip-sync and dance to We Are Who We Are by Kesha! Check it out!

We Are Who We Are (cover)

Camp Lakota Lessons

I have been going away to sleep away camp every summer for the past 10 years. I now work at a sleep away camp in the Catskill Mountains. This summer will be my 3rd year as a counselor. It is a great experience for me. Working at a camp really helps me become comfortable working with children of all ages. I look over children of ages ranging from 5 to 16 years old. I coach a variety of sports such as soccer, basketball, softball, volleyball, dance, and swimming. It is my passion to teach children to live a healthy life, and while at camp I believe I emphasize a healthy life style to campers, counselors, and the rest of the staff. 

I started a running elective for campers that are 13 and older, and also counselors who would like to run as well. This has become one of my favorite activities at camp. I never really liked to run distances before, but this run is around our beautiful lake that is a “cross country” like run. It has many different running conditions including pavement, hills, woods, fields, etc. This run became extremely popular especially on girls campus because it was a fun way to stay in shape, and also brought all of us closer together. It was an accomplishment to finish this 3 mile run every day within an hour long period! By the end of the summer it was so good to see some of the girls faces when they saw how much they progressed from day one. By the end of the summer, the girls who started day one had cut their times down to finishing 3 miles in under 45 minutes!

Between coaching, and just being around children all day I really learn a lot more than I thought I would as a counselor. Children of different ages work in a variety of ways, and you have to cater to the specific needs of the different age groups. For example, my first summer as a counselor I was in a bunk with 10 year olds. They liked to play games, run around, and be physically active without a fight. Last summer I was in a bunk with 14-15 year olds and it was like pulling teeth with them to actually play their scheduled activities just because they wanted to give their counselors a hard time. You really learn to pick your battles with each age group. Although you may not think that this is important to be a teacher it is! Students of all ages are going to give you a hard time, and you have to find a way to get them on your side otherwise they are going to continue to be hard to work with.

Camp has taught me so much throughout the years. I cannot imagine my summers without it. Even once I graduate, and become a teacher I plan on continuing my way up the ladder at camp over the summer. "We live 10 months for 2." Camp Lakota Summer 2012!

Virtus Workshop

For the first two days of class, we took part in a workshop that was all about child sexual abuse. My first response to the movies were that these two men who are now labels as child sex offenders did not even seem the least bit remorseful or sorry for sexually abusing these children. They made it seem as if it was the most normal thing that they could possibly do. This was very surprising to me. They knew exactly what they are doing, and had a process each time. Whether it be to have their children invite friends over and abuse them that way, or any other way it is wrong. The emotion the children had was heartbreaking. The one girl who was abused by her pastor in my mind was the most upsetting story. Her parents made a point to say that after they found out about the pastor abusing their daughter, other people came up to them saying that they had suspected things were going on, but did not say anything until the scandal was out! This story really shows that if you have a suspicion act upon it because you can really save a child from a nightmare. There are many signs that a person could be a potential child sex abuser such as: 1. they like to be with children rather than be with people their age, 2. they are always touching children i.e. tickling, hugging, etc. and 3. They let children get away with things that their parents normally would not. 


There are a lot of myths involved with this topic as well, and I believe that it is extremely important for all people to understand that these are myths, NOT FACTS!
     Myth 1: Most child sex abusers are strangers to their victims.
In reality, most abusers abuse children that they know. It could be someone that their child is friends with, someone the see around a park, or even a religious figure!
     Myth 2: Children usually lie about child sexual abuse.
Most children will never go to these lengths to get an adult in trouble, and if they do they almost always come clean about lying. I believe the video said that 95% of allegations of abuse are later proven true. When a child does tell someone that they are being sexually abused, it must be taken seriously.


Some children will not tell someone right away that they are being sexually abused for a few reasons: 1. They believe they are to blame for being abused and 2. Children believe that other adults will not take them serious, and will just ignore the allegations. Right from the beginning children need to be told and reassured over and over that if they are ever violated by another person that they must go to someone immediately so that it can be stopped, but also be told that they will never be in trouble for telling. Perpetrators will often tell their victims not to tell anyone or they will be in big trouble, and children will often believe this. They are manipulated by the perpetrators, but this can be reversed if they have other adult figures reassuring them that they are not doing anything wrong, and that they are doing the right thing about telling another adult.


In addition, we learned that if we ever suspect that a child is being abused that we should first call the child abuse line for our area and/or call the local police to investigate the situation. 


This workshop really opened up my eyes to the potential danger, and knowing all of this and other information brought up through Virtus, I feel as if I am much more prepared to be working with children, and to help them stay safe if they are ever put in a position of harm.

Winter Break

Over my winter break I was a volunteer for my old high school's winter track and field team. I assisted my old coaches in teaching high jump, hurdles, and shot put. This is an experience that will help me a lot in the long run. I was intimidated at first, but I found out after just one day that it was something I loved to do. 
One part of this experience really sticks out in my mind. After just one short week with 4 freshman girl high jumpers, I had helped them improve their jumps by at least 4" each. Now this may not seem like a lot, but 4" in one week for any high jumper is awesome! Before I came these girls could not clear opening height (4') at their first few meets, but by the time I was at a meet with them they were clearing multiple heights. I saw their confidence rise, and it really felt great to know that I helped these girls gain more confidence in themselves and their jumping.
I hope to continue having more experiences like this because to me this is what being a physical educator is about: helping students to achieve goals whether they be physical or mental.

Learning Through The Physical!

"Learning through the physical" is a phrase used to describe other aspects of physical education besides just the physical or "psychomotor" aspects within physical education. There are two other aspects to physical education that are just as important as the psychomotor domain is and those are the cognitive domain and affective domain. The cognitive learning is a child's ability to think and develop mentally. Most children are both multi-sensory learners and active learners which makes learning in physical education a great time for children to put their minds to work as well as their physical body! The affective domain of physical education covers a child's ability to interact and socialize with other students. Physical education is the best class to have the atmosphere where students can talk and be loud without being scared that they will get in trouble. It is in fact the only class where students can do this! It is also the only class where socializing in combined with cognitive development, and physical development to make one "super-class" in my mind. "Learning through the physical" makes learning new information fun for them because they can run around and be with their friends without even realizing they are learning new information at the same time. This is concept that has kept physical education alive in schools. It is hard to come up with a counter argument saying that this is wrong. "Learning through the physical" explains the importance of physical education in school, and why what we do as physical educators is important in all aspects of a child life: mentally, physically, and socially.