St. Mary's: Outside Looking In!

               These past few weeks attending St. Mary’s as a TA for the Motor Development class have been special. I feel more comfortable than I ever have, establishing a leadership role juggling both the SUNY Cortland students and the St. Mary’s students. The goal I set for myself in becoming a Teacher’s Assistant has provided me with the experience I am looking for. This past Monday, my group did a great job establishing an active and fun environment for the St. Mary’s Pre-K. The SUNY Cortland students seemed more comfortable and confident with providing their tasks to the St. Mary’s students. As a group, they need to work on their creativity to the games they choose from a motivating stand point. Looking up games that already exist is great but incorporating your own twist and mark on the game keeps will eventually allow you to make your own games up. The relativity to the themes each week can also use some improving. Again this is all just being able to work on the creativity portion of their lesson plans. Other than that it has been a successful and fun semester with the Motor Development group at St. Mary’s too say the least!

Cortland Mini-Conference

           
           The Cortland Mini-Conference provided many unique ideas to help express Physical Education in our future classrooms. The Conference started off with excitement with a flash mob representing SUNY Cortland, which was created by Dr. Yang. SUNY students in Dr. Yang’s Motor Development and EDU 255 classes including myself, helped structure and coordinate the dance, props, and technology to establish a successful beginning of the conference.

Being a member of APEM, I had the opportunity to work the conference and help presenters with the technical services that they needed to help get there information across to the visitors attending. Listening into some of the presentations, I became interested in many of the topics that expressed technology in there PE programs.

            Most of my time was spent in the Exergaming Room, which provided different ways to perform physical activity while playing videogames. I have had strong interest in this area since the NYSAAPHERD Conference I attended at C.W. Post back in 2008. The motivation that comes with playing these Exergames is extraordinary. It will only be a matter of time before this area of physical activity becomes a huge impact in what PE majors like me are trying to accomplish in this field.

Lab B: Jump Roping

A reality check was presented to me on this particular lab assignment. After viewing my last performance, I worked harder and prepared more in advance to improve my teaching performance. Unfortunately, my nerves had gotten the best of me. Although, I improved some of the bad habits I had in the prior lab, I failed to target the smaller things needed for the lesson. Even though they are considered small they are still extremely important to the learning process. Such things consisted of safety rules, signaling for attention and specific feedback.

I was extremely disappointed with my performance after putting in such time and effort to this lab. I didn’t doubt what I wanted to do with my career but if I was good enough for it. I care so much about the impact of learning I have on future students that it left me with a stomach ache. I was thinking too much about what I should be doing right and what I was doing wrong throughout the performance. The concentration of my lessons needs to be the quality of learning that I establish within the students comprehension.

After watching the video though, it didn’t look as bad as it felt. You could tell of my nervousness but on a positive note my speaking was clear with less slang and at times I showed signs of confidence. The structure of the lesson could have been organized better, breaking down the motor task further. Overall though this lab has shown me that I have come a long way but also have a lot more to learn.


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