Wheelchair Polo

I took on the challenge to teach my class how to play wheelchair polo. I thought this was a very difficult task because I could not find a single thing on the internet that could help me teach wheelchair polo. I looked at many websites just to try and figure out the rules for horse polo. I wanted to incorporate as many of the horse polo rules as possible into wheelchair polo. I definately think that my lesson could have gone better. I don't think I was prepared well enough to teach. I forgot to give my students a safety statement and I didn't even give them a demonstration of what I wanted them to do. I simply explained the tasks that were expected of them. I could see in a real class where I wasn't teaching my peers, several things going wrong. I could imagine having students hit each other with the pillow poles because of not having a safety statement. I also saw that not having a demonstration, the students were not using the correct form when they were swinging their pole. I think students would have done better seeing exactly how to hit the ball instead of just giving them the cues. I also think I could have done more tasks. Just hitting the ball back and forth to a partner gets old pretty quick. I thought it would be a good challenge for the students to hit the ball down a line and have them try to keep the ball right on the line. I think this was a very difficult task and students easily gave up on it.


Cool Polo Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tqPeeUvNsE

Mini-Conference

I woke up early on a Friday to be a part of my class and perform at the beginning of the mini-conference. I must say it was a unique experience and I had fun. Because of being part of my class, I was also able to attend the key note speaker session, Dr. John Passarini. He talked a lot about one of his students, Katie Lynch, who seemed to be an amazing person. The doctors didn't think she would be able to accomplish any of the things that she had when she was born. I liked her quote, that no one has disabilities, that everyone is just differently abled. I think she is an inspiration to not only people who have been diagnosed with disabilities, but to all people. Seeing the videos of her accomplishments made me feel like I can accomplish anything that I want to as well. Dr. Passerini seemed to have made connections with many of his students, he created these bonds and made people feel special. I hope that as a future physical educator, I can create that kind of bond with some of my students. I want to be a person that may make a difference in their lives.

First teaching experience

Over the past couple of weeks at school, I have learned enough to make my first teaching experience look bad. I did not get the class excited to learn how to do a simple self defense move. I felt that I projected my voice clearly and loud enough for everybody to hear. I did more cues and I added things in after I was almost done with the lesson. I felt that I definately could have been more prepared and told the class everything they needed to know before I had them start to perform the move themselves. I thought it was good that I involved myself with the class while they were practicing the move. I helped one of the other students with the move as he did not have a partner. On the other hand, by doing this I was unable to observe the other students and make sure they were doing the move correctly. There was also no challenge for the students who already knew how to do the move. They could have easily been bored and disruptive to the rest of the class. Fortunately, these are all things that I can and will learn from.