Photo by Damon Hall on Unsplash Earlier this year, each teacher at ISB was asked to set some Professional Goals. You can read about mine here. I always find this process to be challenging. My reflections on this challenge are that prior to Covid, I had a very specific set of goals and strict discipline about it. This was clear in the training I was doing for 70.3 Ironman with the hope to get into my age group for Worlds. It was clear in the Professional courses I chose to commit to and the connections to the work I was focused on in our PE and Health curriculum and department.…

“Is it a boy or a girl? Do you know, yet?” When I was expecting each of my children, this was generally the first question I was asked by anyone who could see I was pregnant.  And then as people learnt the biological sex of my now-arrived child, they would comment on what they are sure I was hoping for in the next yet-to-arrive child based on a combination of the child they could see + cultural norms of the country we lived in.   This resulted in some very curious conversations with clearly invested strangers. One older lady pulled me aside to tell me how lucky I was to…

This blog is featured on Mr Andrew Milne’s amazing blog for Health Educators – Slow Chat Health. You can find it as one of many Micro-blogs for the month of May 2022. https://slowchathealth.com/2022/05/29/identity/ In writing this blog and sharing it, I know that I am speaking to friends and like-minded teachers and educators and probably athletes and/or movement activists who are already converted.  Preaching to the choir, so to speak.  We identify with the importance of education, we have committed our lives to work with young people and we subscribe to the philosophy of ‘do no harm’.  We are (hopefully) one of many adults supporting great teaching and learning moments as our students…

Challenge can be a difficult word or concept to explain and model in a PE classroom. What we find challenging is very personal and could be the same as another in our class but we can also find that we are alone in ways we feel challenged and learning to personalise and better understand ourselves is all wrapped up in how we can help others to learn about ‘challenge’. This year I have been focused on looking at Challenge with my students. I began this blog post and have been looking at ways to unpack and try and offer learning opportunities over the past few months that have centred on…

If you have come to this page without reading Part 1 – please take a moment to read the process that has gone into this unit.  It is important that you know that this is not a stand-alone Climbing unit, but is one of a range of units offered for students to choose from.  It is entirely possible to teach this unit as a stand-alone unit, but you may wonder why the assessment rubric is designed the way it is rather than to possibly be more Climbing specific. Quick Introduction At ISB we offer some Choice units to our G7-8 classes.  We have evolved this practice to allow student choice…

In our Middle School PE program, we have always tried to offer our G7-8 students the opportunity to make some choices around what they might like to do as part of the curriculum.  We know that choice gives some ownership and some opportunity to either try something new or to add on to something they already feel confident in.  We also know that students at this age are very invested in their friends/peers and that this may help them to create a group or team that they can collaborate with that they have chosen across PE classes.   We have talked a lot about Learner Agency at ISB, (see pic…