Teaching at Paul Revere

This past week, I got the opportunity to teach two periods of P.E. class at Paul Revere Intermediate School.  I taught one class of fourth graders and one class of fifth graders.  We were just finishing our unit on floor hockey, so we began our class period with a review of hockey rules and techniques.  I began with a warm-up where the students ran 6 laps around the gym and then walked one.  When the students were finished they sat in their squads.  Once everyone was finished, I started the review by reading the questions one at a time and waiting for students to raise their hand to answer.  I awarded each student who had a correct answer with two "Panther Points".  The students did very well on the review and I was confident that they would do well on the test which was the following day.  After the review, I divided the students up into four teams and directed the teams to their respective courts (I had the gym divided into two courts).  After assigning positions to the students, we began play with a face-off.  The students had a lot of fun.  I tried to get the games going quickly because I wanted the students to get as much activity as possible.  Each class period is only thirty minutes, so trying to maximize your activity is key. Between the two classes, I only had one real instance where a student's behavior became an issue. In one class, this particular student, who is a year older than all the others, was playing too rough and I received more than one complaint from other students.  He was also screaming very loudly throughout the game for no good reason. I pulled him aside and asked what was going on.  I informed him that other students were upset with his rough play and that I thought his screaming was unnecessary.  After that, he seemed to behave better.  Overall, it was a great experience.  For the most part, the kids there are great.  I knew it was gonna be a good day, when I first walked in and many of the kids were excited to find out that I was teaching class.  If I was nervous beforehand, it went away when I found out that the kids were just happy to see me.  I noticed in particular that a lot of the male students were happy to have a male teacher and when I thought about it, all of the teachers that I have met at Paul Revere are female.  So I think its good that I can fill that male role model void that might be there for some of the students.  Many of them know that I am a soccer coach, so that alone draws a lot of their interest.  After this experience, I look forward to teaching more classes.