Why I want to be a Physical Education Teacher

Why I want to be a Physical Education Teacher

We all have different reasons for why we choose our specific career paths. Some people may try to choose something that they can enjoy forever. Others may have chosen their career because it will make them a lot of money someday. Some chose their path so that you can make a change in the world.
For me, it was never about the money, I want to make a change. I want to have a positive influence of the lives of my students. Also I want to enjoy what I will be spending the rest of my life doing. Furthermore, I believe that there are so many children and adults out there that are very physically uneducated, and this scares me.
I knew I wanted to work with children right after I got my first job when I was sixteen. I was hired at my local YMCA as youth fitness trainer. The job required me to make up workout routines for young children aged 4-13 to do while their parents worked out in the fitness center for half an hour. I thought that this was terrific that the children were getting such an early jump start on creating healthy habits that they can continue for the rest of their lives.
After working as a youth fitness trainer at the YMCA for a while, I was added in as a group youth fitness trainer and was able to teach activity classes for children in the gym. We would do everything from step aerobics to yoga, various games and team building activities. I looked forward to going to work every day and always have a great time working with the children; this is when I knew that I wanted to be a physical education teacher. I knew that I could spend the rest of my life doing something very similar to what I was doing at the time.
Once I decided I wanted to go to college and study physical education, everyone that I mentioned physical education to told me that I had to go and visit Cortland. At the time I had never herd of it. Little did I know that Cortland would be where I spent the next four, possibly five years of my life. I knew that Cortland was the place for me as soon as I stepped on the campus for the first time during my visit in October of 2007. I honestly cannot even explain to you why I knew this but I just did. I had visited a bunch of other colleges before going to Cortland and they just did not have the same effect on me that Cortland did.
After my freshman year of college I ended up getting a job as a summer camp counselor, and I loved it. The camp that I worked at was a free day camp where parents could drop their children off anytime between 9 am and 3 pm for free and the children could stay as long as they wanted between these hours. Because the children all showed up at different times, the camp was not very organized. Therefore I had free rein with what games and activities I did with the kids. This gave me a chance to try out all of the new games I had learned in my class’s freshman year at Cortland. It was a great learning experience, because I was able to learn how to explain and set up games, and how to organize the children. It was like extra practice for my classes to come the following year.
Up until this past summer (2011) I was unsure of what age group I wanted to teach. What made my decision was being hired to run the summer sports came at a different YMCA then the one that I had previously worked at. I was working at an inner city summer camp with under privileged children aged eight to twelve. This was a whole different world for me. These children came from all different types of backgrounds. They were much more diverse then the children I was used to working with. What I enjoyed most about working with these children was how grateful they were that you would take the time to get to know them, and take the time to teach them about all different sports. They would come in every day with big smiles on their face and were always so excited to learn whatever sport I was teaching that day.
A lot of these children that I was working with did not have great support systems at home so they really depended on me, their counselor for guidance. I did not get paid very much to be there, but I looked forward to going each and every day, and I would always spend much more time there then I had too. I can honestly say that I know that I have a positive influence on these children and that I made a difference in their lives. I can now say that my ideal job would be working with elementary aged children in an inner city school district, and I know this because I have had such awesome experiences in my past jobs to know that this is what I would like to do for the rest of my life.