Birthday Time

Well, my birthday was yesterday and the teachers had me a cake and acouple of presents when I got there in the morning. I was shocked! It was very nice and I enjoy the time with all of them, I am very lucky to work with them and learn from them as well.

Basketball Time

Basketball practice is going strong right now and everybody has almost shifted gears for the season and the excitement of how are we going to do this year. For me, It is a time to catch up on things and focus on what I need to do to get prepared for the spring. If that means getting ready for softball or the Praxis III. The girls basketball coach asked me to help him but I couldn't because I am responsible for the girls off-season program for those that do not play basketball. One of these days I plan to get back into basketball because I played it and still love it. Knowledge is power!

Blogging Topics

I find myself blogging about coaching more than a P.E. class because that is what I am involved in more this year. My first year I had five P.E. class and now I only have two. It allows me to have a larger class and we are able to play large team based games instead of small classes where we focused on more individual learning more than team based. I would not trade my job for any job in the world right now because I love coaching and teaching. When I was younger, I heard many teachers and coaches complain about the pay and I can understand that if you already have a family you need to provide for but my wife and I are doing pretty well with no kids. It is a big difference than a student worker job at the university. I look forward to the upcoming year to further my knowledge of teaching and coaching.

One sport over.....

Well, the football season for Genoa is over and it turned out to be an interesting year for Genoa Football. All in all, we showed improvement every game and some players really stood out in the first year. I, as young coach, learned a lot about the game and mainly learned how to teach it to a student that has never been involved with a football program. It has been a fun year so far and can't wait to get started on softball practice.

Foreign Exchange

We recently add two foreign exchange students to our enrollment and I have one of them in my physical education class. Her name is Maria and she is from Spain. At the beginning of the year I sit down with them and have a group discussion to get to know all my students. She speaks English pretty well but sometimes she does not comprehend certain words we use to explain things.

In my class, I allow for a lot of peer to peer tutoring and have found it successful in most cases. I was very interested to see if the communication barrier would effect her performance. In the picture I uploaded, she is to the right of me (I am on the other side of the net in a white shirt) because I am demonstrating how to set the volleyball.










I like the sheltered instruction when dealing with diverse learners because it fits well with peer to peer teaching. I think it has helped to have her engage more verbally with speaking English because she is becoming more comfortable. I still have to help her in comprehension because the youth today has their own dialog and she does not understand their lingo.

I sat down with her one day and we talked about what her concerns were when she first started school. One of them was the fact that she sometimes does not comprehend what we are saying and she just nods her head when she doesn't understand. The girl’s basketball coach and I sat down with her and explained that it is good if she asks questions because he had some trouble with her understanding terminology. Now she is doing much better and is more out going than when she arrived.

My definition of diversity is a state of mind different from your own that could be culturally, religiously, or racially. Without diversity, it would be a boring world to live in.