Monday, September 29, 2014
Connecting School and Home Experiences
When I was young I was fascinated by sports and athletic achievements in sport. I remember watching Micheal Jordan win his last of his second three-peat of NBA Finals in 1998, his mastery of his craft was amazing to watch. I remember following and occasionally tuning into the Tour de France in the early 2000's watching Lance Armstrong, who at the time was a personal hero, overcome numerous obstacles, including cancer and doping allegations to win seven straight titles. Unfortunately that story doesn't end with the same admiration and applause it started with. Even so, these and other athletic achievements, such as my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers winning two Super Bowls in the past decade, have fueled my passion for learning how the human body functions and how to optimize, within the rules, the ability of the body. The areas of health and physical education gives me the opportunity to continue studying these interests and share my knowledge with students to help them live healthier, more active, hopefully longer lives.
Though I love sports, i realize it is not the only route to improve physical fitness and health. Even some of the top athletes make poor health choices. Micheal Jordan drinks alcohol, and smokes cigars. Lance Armstrong eventually came out and admitted to blood doping. These, of course, are only two examples. When I think about this I wonder how different the makeup of the sport universe might be if these issues didn't exist. I realize as long sports are played competitively, there will be those that try to bend or break the rules to get an advantage. Others will just make choices that negatively affect their health. With this knowledge I want to try to educate future students on methods to optimize their health though good choices in food, proper decision making and personal fitness, and find joy in physical activity itself and be happy with themselves. I want to be able to properly communicate the dangerous of poor choices in order to hopefully improve the health of the population.
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I really liked your description of how particular athletes inspired you as a youth. I remember watching Michael Jordan play against the Utah Jazz in 1997, when he was sick and sweating, but still came out and shot a game-winning score. Even though I was rooting for the Jazz, I couldn't help but be inspired and filled with admiration for his perseverance. Because so many students are inspired by sports figures in their lives, I wonder if there is a way where you can capitalize on that as a PE or health teacher? For instance, I wonder if you could share training tips from Olympic athletes when the Olympics are being held, or other things like that. I think these tips would mean a lot to students if they came from people they admire. Just brainstorming ideas here...thanks for a great posting.
ReplyDeleteOk wow, I just typed a whole long comment and it deleted it. So this one probably won't be as long, sorry. Anyways, I love this post. I think it is awesome that you talked about different heroes that affected your desire to become a health teacher. Even though some of their decisions weren't the best, you are turning them around to help your students see the importance of taking care of their bodies. The human body is amazing.It has many different parts that work together perfectly to accomplish the many functions and tasks it need to do every day. When people misuse or abuse their bodies, the functions do not continue to work the way they should. I love that you want to help show students how to take care of their bodies so that they can live long and happy lives. Many people are unaware of how important healthy decisions really are.
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