What type of teacher will you be?

Reflective or Invariant?

A reflective teacher is a teacher who achieves success by using a variety of teaching skills, which work well with the environment. Reflective teachers are able to reflect upon a given teaching behavior to meet the needs of their students. They can change their teaching behaviors depending up a many factors, these being different school environments, differences among students, facility conditions, levels of support, type and amount of equipment. Reflective teachers use critical analysis, knowledge, skills, tools and resources to better their teaching. Also a reflective teacher is a teacher who can successfully design and implement an effective educational program by adapting his or her teaching style depending on the school setting. In addition to being able to adapt to meet the needs of students, reflective teachers are creative. They teach a variety of games and activities, in new and exciting ways. They try new things and teach activities that are out of their comfort zone. All in all being a reflective teacher means doing everything in your power to make sure that you are being the best teacher you can be, so that your students can be as successful as possible in physical education.

On the other hand there is another type of teacher that is the exact opposite of the reflective, these are invariant teachers. An invariant teacher is defined as a teacher who uses one approach in all teaching situations regardless of the class of school conditions. An invariant teacher does not adapt their teaching style to meet the needs of their students. They have the same teaching approach no matter what subject area they are teaching, or what type of class they are teaching. An invariant teacher does not teach outside of the main five or six team sports, they stick with the same old sports year after year.

Will you choose to be a reflective teacher or a invariant teacher?

New Era or Old Era?

Old era physical education is the type of physical education that was taught before 1996. Old era physical education was taught before the New York State learning standards were created. Before the New York State standards physical education curriculums were built around team sports. The curriculum was created in a bottom up design. Furthermore, grading was not based on student performance of progress, but based of the idea of “get dressed, participate in class, be good” way of thinking that was very popular before 1996 and the New York State learning standards.

Opposite of old era physical education is new era physical education. When I say opposite I really mean complete opposite. New era physical education started to come into play after 1996 and the New York State learning standards. These standards set the bar high for teachers and have created much success in physical education classed. Also, social needs are meeting in new physical education. For example, obesity, lifetime fitness, and living a physically active and healthy lifestyle are some of the social needs that are being met in classes. Curriculums are now based off of the New York State learning standards, and the curriculum is now designed from the top down. Lessons that are now taught during new physical education are activity based not drill based and they focus on health related fitness components and skill related components of teaching physical education. Lastly grading is now based on learning, and not as much on if the student changes and participates.

What era should your teaching style be a part of?

New PE or Old PE?

The old style of physical education is now seen as an inappropriate practice. Old Physical education consisted of formal exercises, drudgery, and training. All of the lessons were based around skill related fitness with little to no time spent on health related fitness components. Furthermore the old style of physical educations had the mind set “just do, don’t think.” When it came time for students to be fitness tested they were rarely prepared by their old school physical education teacher. In addition the results gathered from these fitness tests were rarely compared to other students results.

On the opposite spectrum is what we now refer to as new physical education. This new style of physical education is seen as an appropriate practice, and consists of activity based lesson, is fun and joyful for its students. Students are taught the concepts of health and skill related fitness. Health related fitness and lifelong physical activity participation are main goals of the new style of physical education. Furthermore when it comes to any type of assessment, students are well prepared ahead of time, and understand why they are being tested, and the results from these tests are compared to other students to see how they match up. Reflective teachers teach the new style of physical education, where as the invariant teachers we spoke about before are stuck teaching the old style of physical education.

Proactive or Reactive?

There are two different ways that a teacher can prepare and react to inappropriate behavior. They can either be a proactive teacher or a reactive teacher when dealing with behavior issues. A proactive teacher is a teacher that sets students up for success. The proactive teacher does everything in their power to prevent inappropriate behavior from occurring. Some ways that a proactive teacher prevents mis behavior is that they post rules in their gym, and go over the rules often to make sure that the students understand what is expected of them in the class. Furthermore the proactive teacher makes the students very aware of what the consequences are if they break any of the rules in his or her class. By doing this the students know what type of behavior is expected of them and they know the consequences if they decide to behave differently then what it expected of them. Not that the proactive teacher will not have to react to students breaking rules in their class, but it should not happen too often considering they prepared their students with clear directions and models of good behaviors.

You choose old style of physical education, or the new style of physical education, which one would you want to be taught if you were a student?

The other type of teacher is a reactive teacher. A teacher that is reactive, does not do everything in their power to prevent bad behaviors, they just deal with it when the behaviors occur. Because the teacher just reacts to the students miss behavior with little to no attempt at stooping the behavior before it starts, they are going to see a lot more behavioral issues then a teacher that is proactive when it come to managing behavior. The students might not always be aware that they are breaking a rule because the rules might not have been made very clear to them, or that some of the rules were forgotten, because the teacher with the reactive behavior strategy failed to remind the students of what is expected of them.

What style will you choose when it comes to behavior management?