Competency 1: Content Knowledge
Description of Competency 1:
A health and fitness teacher understands health/fitness content, disciplinary concepts, and tools of inquiry related to the development of a physically educated and health literate person.
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Reflection Connection:
As a PE teacher, it’s important to understand neuroscience and its role in skill development, particularly when it comes to trauma. We will have students in our classroom who hail from all demographics and raised in all sorts of different ways, and it’s essential that we make sure they feel welcome into our classroom and that they feel safe. As students get older and the brain develops, synapses are created to respond to situations. If we have students with a background of trauma, they will surely respond to feedback differently than students who do not have a history of trauma. As students start to cope with their past and thoughts, their bodies become the “driving force” behind a child’s behavior. Therefore, it’s important to model appropriate techniques to handle stress and anxiety so students are able to enhance their skills in coping as well.
When students are learning a new skill, it’s also important to use academic language so they are exposed to the content in which we’re teaching it, but begin by explaining in terms and verbiage that they already know. This helps scaffold their prior knowledge of a skill to their current acquisition. For students who are developmentally delayed, they may require explicit instruction on movement concepts, locomotor skills, non-locomotor skills, manipulative skills, specialized motor skills, game skills, and sport skills. For those students, teaching a class like adaptive PE where concepts are slowed down and learned appropriately with peer partners, or deliberate social/emotional learning techniques would be beneficial in a perfect world.
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