Teaching Philosophy

As a Professional Physical Education teacher I set my philosophy of education upon four major beliefs. Together these four beliefs provide the basis of what I value, what I do and why I do it as an educator. These four main beliefs that I have are, leadership, cooperation, goal setting and fitness.

Leadership is in my opinion very important, because the students need to be able to have the confidence to lead others when necessary. Furthermore through physical education and participating in different types of games and activities, this allows the students to have a chance to be a leader more often than in other subject areas.

Cooperation is something that I value as an educator because a major part of life is working with others. If students can learn to work together towards a common goal in physical education class, then this can transfer over to other areas of their life and help them be an active and helpful member of a team, no matter what it is they are working one.

When it comes to education, in my teaching I highly value goal setting. Goal setting teaches students to set the bar high for themselves. In addition to setting the bar high creating and reaching goals lets the students see how far they have come, they see that they are improving and learning and it keeps children excited and actively participating in class.

Fitness is something that I value the most in my teaching. I believe that fitness should be incorporated into all of my lessons. No matter what is the main focus of my lesson I believe that it can be taught in a way that works to improve my students fitness, all while they are learning. Being physical fit has not only health benefits, but cognitive benefits as well. Students that are physically fit are more likely to perform better in the classroom as well and in physical education class.

As a professional physical educator I believe that there are four major themes and ideas that frame what I do and what I value in the field. These themes and ideas are, physical education is for everyone, creating lifelong fitness, building confidence and promoting wellness.

Physical education is for everyone. This is something that I think needs to be stressed to not only our students, but to the community as a whole. There is always some type of physical activity that everyone can enjoy, it is just a matter of guiding our students to finding what it is that they enjoy.

Creating lifelong fitness, recommendations state that at least sixty minutes of physical activity on most, if not all days of the week. As a physical educator I believe that it is important that we guide our students towards living a healthy life style for the rest of their lives. As a part of this, and a our role in helping students achieve lifelong fitness is guiding our students towards physical activity that they can enjoy and participate in long after they are out of high school. As a physical educator I need to help my students discover what it is that they are successful at and what they enjoy most, so that they will want to participate in these activities for the rest of their lives. Furthermore, by finding lifetime activities for my students they will be well on their way to meeting the recommendations of at least sixty minutes a day for most if not all days of the week.

Building confidence, confidence is a major part of teaching. Building confidence is one of the most important things we can help our students with. The more confident our students are the more successful they will be. This confidence from being successful in physical education can carry over to other aspects of student’s lives. The most successful people are the ones who have to confidence in themselves and what they are doing, and that is why they succeed.

Promoting wellness within my students is one of my main goals when it comes to my teaching. Wellness is defined as, optimal health and well being. In addition to physical fitness, wellness encompasses the dimensions of emotional, spiritual, interpersonal, social, nutritional and environmental well being. I believe that as a teacher it is my duty to help guide my students into finding what they need to do to have optimal health and well being.