Welcome back to the 20 days of summer school physical education series! If you are just joining this series, stop right now and check out Summer School Physical Education: Day 1. What Works and What Doesn’t.

The post above details what I will be talking about day to day, and how it can help you improve your social distancing physical education classes in the fall. It also lays out my class size, class time frames and space I am able to use.

If you are currently teaching summer school physical education, please leave comments on what works for you! I love collaborating, so let me know what you’re up to.

Moving Forward This Fall

I went to a meeting after work yesterday to get a better understanding of what the district I am working for this summer is going to do. The superintendent is very present in the school, and wants to get teacher feedback to see what their school district will do this fall.

From the general consensus of the other teachers opinions, the teachers would feel most comfortable teaching remotely. I was a little taken aback seeing how adamant they are about remote learning. But if you really think about it, we have a fraction of the school here for the summer. It’s working because kids aren’t moving around for passing time, they aren’t eating lunch in the cafeteria and the students and parents pay to be here. They know that the rules must be followed, in order to secure they’re spot in summer school instead of being kicked out and not getting a refund.

Listening to everyone talk about an upcoming school year that I am not apart of (I teach in a different district), made me realize that it might not actually work. No matter how you look at it someone is going to be upset.

Whether that be the teachers that don’t feel comfortable being here if we go back to in person teaching, the parents that have full time jobs and can’t be home with their kids if we do remote or the students that can’t get the education and instruction that they NEED whether that be remote or in person teaching.

No matter what, someone is going to be angry or feel defeated. It’s a lose lose and your opinion of what you feel is best for yourself or your family is not wrong, even if it differs from person to person.

My suggestion to anyone is to show more compassion towards one another. We live in a world where all we do is fight online or in person. Either try to understand other peoples opinions or views, or move on with your life and worry about whats affecting you and your family only without spreading hate.

What Did we do Today?

As I have mentioned in an earlier post this week, we are more relaxed on what we are doing. Fine tuning skills, and games are my main focus so the kids can still have fun while getting physical activity.

Both classes started off outside. But instead of giving them their outdoor free time right at the beginning I wanted to try ultimate football one more time. We got it in right away just in case more people/teams needed to use the field. My goal was to give them more than enough space to play offense and defense in an outdoor area.

Even yesterday, I talked about how I probably wouldn’t try ultimate football again with the kids. But if done right the students are able to be socially distanced.

So for today, I made their teams. Since it’s a non contact game anyways I made a rule that if you are playing defense you MUST be at least 5 feet from your opponent. The point of the game is to advance the ball up the field, so you have to rely on your teammates to be moving and getting open. They’re trying to keep their distance from each other anyways in order to receive a clean pass. If there ever was a student that was playing a little too close for my liking, I just simply said take a few steps back and they did. I have a great group of kids so they make my job easy.

Another thing I did for the kids was made really wide boundaries. We played sideline to sideline on the football field as the end zones, and I gave them 40 yards wide to spread out. The kids were able to keep their distances because they utilized all of the space.

As for the ball handling, each student was given hand sanitizer before hand to ensure their hands are clean.

After we played football, we headed to the weight room. Same rules, no fitness notebooks anymore. We are enjoying our last couple days without having to keep track of our weight, reps, exercises or goals.

Once I felt confident everyone got a decent workout in, we came back to our gym and played a class game of one of their favorites, Capture the Flag. I picked teams, and had them use their pool noodles for tagging. With small classes, and large gyms Capture the Flag is definitely doable.

Overall

Both classes today did great…as always. I think they are enjoying the step back I’m taking from explaining rules, games, activities or constantly telling them to socially distance or wear their masks.

They for the most part keep their distance, and I can’t even remember the last time I asked someone to put their mask on.

Tomorrow is our last day, and even though I will be so sad to not see these kids anymore, I am so happy I got to meet them. Through a PANDEMIC! And they crushed it.