Preface (updated May 27, 2026): I wrote this in early spring. By the time it was about to be posted, the conversation around AI had shifted hard, and I had to add this. Sorry, Andy. So much for keeping it micro. NPR covered the trend: commencement speakers are getting booed off the stage just for …
If you haven’t seen Hyrox yet, it’s a beast. Eight 1km runs, each separated by a high-intensity functional strength station. There’s no sitting down, no "time-outs." You’re either pushing heavy steel or you’re running. Lately, it struck me: This is exactly what a school day looks like. We don’t just "teach." We are constantly shifting from the high-power …
Continue reading The 8-Station Term: Why Teaching is the Ultimate Hyrox Event
Teachers love a good "Turn and Talk" moment. It’s quick, it sparks discussion, and it keeps students engaged. But what if we could level it up by adding movement? Enter Stretch and Share, a simple yet powerful strategy that combines kinesthetic movement with meaningful conversation. The Inspiration A while back, my friend Christopher Pepper shared …
Continue reading Stretch and Share: A Simple Way to Get Students Moving and Talking
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
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
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 …
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 …
When I first stepped into the classroom, I carried a heavy binder of pedagogy and a heart full of expectations. I used to think that being a "great teacher" was a purely technical feat—a puzzle of perfectly timed lesson plans, sophisticated behavior modification systems, and the pursuit of instructional rigor. I obsessed over the data, …
The pursuit of excellence in Health and Physical Education is an ongoing act of finding balance (or “Tau” in the Aotearoa-New Zealand context I come from). As educators, our primary mission is to create a learning environment where every student, regardless of their capabilities or background, can find a meaningful connection to movement and Hauora …
Teaching is often treated as a problem to be solved. Pick the activity. Link it to a standard(s). Sequence the lesson. Measure performance. In physical education, this can show up as perfectly timed lessons, detailed progressions, and tightly structured plans … everything mapped out in advance: the day, the week, the month, the year … …
#slowchathealth 