Health and Fitness Education, Day 5

CPS training today, for the second time for me in the last six months. Last time I took it for my work place and it was not nearly as long as today. I really don't think three hours were necessary for this presentation. I get it, there are many gray areas and we could spend a whole week talking about the many variables that we should keep in mind while deciding on what is the best way to act. But ultimately it all comes down to one simple idea: if you are in doubt to whether it is a case of abuse or neglect or not, call CPS. It is as simple as that and I do not understand why we had to spend so much time talking about a hundred possible scenarios. I do not think we will ever be alone in making a difficult decision, we will always have the help of our colleagues: fellow teachers and administrative employees.

Health and Fitness Education, Day 4

I find it very useful and interesting to observe my classmates` micro-teaching and I feel I will be learning a lot every day through the reflection that we do afterwards. The two lessons that we had today have been both great. I consider them much better executed than my lesson, two days ago. Important things that I have learned from the micro-teaching activities so far:

- always tell children what to watch/observe before you play them a video.
- give handouts that makes it easier for students to go back to the new information that you have just introduced and that you want them to use during a class activity
- make very sure that you use age appropriate language.
- do not take it for granted that your students know the terms that you are using. Even the simple ones (for you) might be unknown to your students.
- always give directions before you ask students to stand up and reorganize.

I will add more to this list every day, as we go along.

Health and Fitness Education, Day 3

Today it was quite a day. That's because besides the class discussions we also had the first micro-teaching experience and me and my partner presented our lesson about sugar.

Firstly, it was interesting to discuss with my small group partners about our grocery store observations. I was surprised to see how similar our observations were. We have all concentrated on pretty much the same thing and it was helpful to be able to exchange ideas. I think my ideas about the refelction paper that I am going to write are much clearer now.

The discussion about food labels was also interesting and everybody had good ideas and arguments. But on the other hand I don't feel that it has helped me a lot to navigate the complexity of this issue. I will be as lost as ever while shopping because I find it so hard to make sense of all the nutrition information that we are being bombarded with. I don't know who or what to trust. This was an issue while preparing for the sugar lesson too. I used the internet extensively and I found very contradictory opinions and information.

Lastly...our lesson about sugar...I have mixed feelings about it. I know it was far from perfect but I'm not completely ashamed of it either. All the reactions that we got from our classmates and instructor are very helpful and they will be useful for my future lessons. I'm looking forward to seeing the video. It will be a first: I've never seen myself in front of a classroom!

Health and Fitness Education, Day 2

Today we talked for the very first time about a central issue in teaching: lesson planning. Some of the things were familiar to me, as I have written lesson plans before, in Romania. Still, there are obviously differences between what I learned and did in Romania and what is required here. As in most of the things that we have done so far there is a much higher degree of flexibility in the rules that we have to follow while writing a lesson plan. For example I was expecting to have to be much more concerned about the way I phrase the lesson objectives. In the lesson plans that I created before the wording was very important, the type of verbs that I was supposed to use etc. It might be that the expectations are not as high yet because we are just getting started with writing lesson plans. We might get there later. But then we might not.

It is a wonderful journey for me, learning about teaching in the US and approaching everything in ways that are very different from the way they are approached in my home country. I am looking forward to getting more practice in writing lesson plans and I'm going to get started pretty soon, as I have my microteaching assignment on Tuesday.

Health and Fitness Education, Day 1

Today I learned and played with a pre-assessment method that I was not familiar with: the concept map. I think I could use it my classroom in many situations, it is a fun and challenging way to organize information. I liked the fact that it got us all very involved in what we were doing, it captured all our attention and required a lot of energy, communication and concession from all the group members. I am confident it would have the same effect on a group of young students.

Going further, I am looking forward to our next classes, I find the subjects that we are going to discuss very interesting. Having a healthy lifestyle is very important for me and I spend quite a lot of time thinking about it: while I'm shopping for groceries, while I cook for me and my husband, when I go to the gym or when I decide how I want to spend my free time. I've always considered that it is very important to educate our students about health and fitness and I am anxious to discover ways of doing that.