Society entrusts schools to develop students who are well-rounded, well educated, well prepared, well spoken, and well suited for the demands of adult life; but we cannot achieve these goals without our students first being well. By promoting wellness in our schools, we afford our teachers and our students the opportunities to achieve their potential. …
Continue reading Health Education: The Missing Link For Boosting Academic Achievement
As a newly qualified teacher based in the Midlands of England, I have had the pleasure of teaching PE across every key stage of education. The mental gymnastics of going from planning a lesson on the musculoskeletal system, grounded in retrieval practice, cognitive load theory, and strands of Rosenshine’s Principles, to explicitly teaching the importance …
In education, the phrase “picking your battles” means choosing which issues or behaviors are most important to address rather than responding to every minor problem. I have heard this phrase for decades. But how does one go about actually picking these battles? What criteria do we use? What are these battles? Does our administration play …
One of the key components of the The International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) that has truly shaped my practice is the use of provocations to spark curiosity and engagement. I’ve come to see provocations not simply as activities, but as intentional invitations to wonder. They are carefully designed experiences, scenarios, or materials that …
Continue reading Hooking Curiosity: Bringing Provocations to Life in PE
I often toggle between thinking, “That lesson went well,” and “That was a disaster.” Either way, do we really know how our students feel? We certainly cannot unless we actively seek their feedback. Taking this a step further, we often have little idea what students are thinking when they are physically active outside of class. …
What if the thing holding back your strongest student work isn't rigor — it's the fact that you've assigned one product to thirty different people? We spend a lot of time designing what students will learn. We spend a lot less time thinking about who gets left out when we also dictate exactly how they …
Continue reading Choice Isn’t Lowering the Bar — It’s Raising the Ceiling
Shelby Hosmer reflects on parenting through the lens of The Anxious Generation and what it looks like to choose delayed phones, fewer screens, and more independent play.
When I stepped out of the middle school health classroom and into the front office, I didn’t feel like I was starting over. I knew I was bringing something with me. Years of teaching health didn’t just prepare me to deliver content—it trained me to understand behavior, build relationships, and respond in moments that don’t …
Continue reading From Health Class to the Front Office: Same Mission, Different Role
When you love what you teach, who you teach and where you teach in the good times, you feel like you are in your “flow state” but hold on…Let's be real for a minute. How many times have you had to teach through hard circumstances? Maybe students are difficult this year, you are on a …
Last year, I wrote a microblog post about inviting my students into their learning by asking questions. This year, my focus has been on building connections and offering students opportunities to practice ‘real-life’ social skills. Here are the four best things I did in my classroom this year: “Class Connection” Games and Activities My middle …
Continue reading The Four Best Things I Did In My Classroom This Year
Log onto health teacher central at any moment and you can expect to see the following: “I need a hands on lesson about _______”. Teachers do this with great intentions, hoping to foster a fun lesson or activity that gets students moving and learning in a way that may be atypical for standard health education …
For the past five years, I’ve sat through PD after PD telling teachers to “remember your why,” like somehow thinking back to the beginning would fix the growing disconnect I felt from a job I used to love. Every session made it seem like the solution was inside of me. Like if I just cared …
Continue reading I Didn’t Need to “Remember My Why” I Needed Therapy
I recently came across an Instagram post from three content creators who spend a lot of time calling out health and wellness grifters. You know, the kind who sell “biohacks” wrapped in pseudoscience and braggadocio. I'm talking about the influencers who are a little too close to government decision-makers, and seem to be everywhere right …
Continue reading Why Health Class Might Be the Only Longevity Hack You Need
At least 15 years ago, before social media or smartphones touched my high school English classroom, I used to teach an essay by the British novelist Laurie Lee, called "Appetite" as part of a unit on rhetoric. Lee writes about appetite in terms of food, describing the Depression-era pleasure of anticipating a toffee as much better than …
Parent communication from a health education teacher to their student’s parents and/or guardians offers an opportunity to build a valued partnership in how we educate our young people. It also provides crucial support from parents to teachers and can foster intentional communication at home to validate and connect classroom topics with family values and household …
What I Hear: As an itinerant Adapted PE teacher, I travel to 20 schools interacting with 30+ PE teachers. In the conversations that follow I consistently hear frustration about a variety of items ranging from a lack of equipment to scheduling that is not aligned with student needs. While unacceptable these issues are all solvable. …
Continue reading 10 Steps for a Productive Conversation with Administration
Mindlessly scrolling through social media one night, I paused on a post that said, “Take your kid’s side, always.” Stuck somewhere between a teacher eye roll and a flush of mom guilt wondering if I do this enough, the post has bounced around in my head since. My first parent phone call as a new …
After 29 years of coaching gymnastics, I’ve learned something that shows up season after season: The athletes who succeed aren’t just the most skilled - they’re the most mentally prepared. They know how to respond to pressure, reset after mistakes, communicate with teammates, and stay focused on what they can control. Here’s the part we …
Continue reading From Health Class to Game Day: Using What We Teach to Build a Champion Mindset
No, we’re not talking about poly-spots, safe spots, squad spots, or anything in between. We’re talking about structures of play: Side-by-Side: Where players are facing and moving in the same direction. Parallel: Players are in a similar space, but frequently focused on their own thing. Oppositional: There are clearly two or more individuals/teams versus each …
Sean McVay is the youngest Head Coach to win a Super Bowl. He understands a common delusion among high performers – that endurance equals excellence. That working yourself down to a nub somehow equates to success. Reflecting on his early career, he admitted, “I used to like almost think it was cool to be able …
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