Comic Dish Webcomics Hosting :: View topic - Unexpected praise for an unexpectedly hard job!

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 5:07 pm

Today was my first full day as a PE (physical education) teacher. I had spent half a day earlier, and learned pretty quickly that it's killer hard on the ears. But I do just love Bedford Middle School (ages 12-13 or so), so when the asked for a volunteer substitute, I agreed. Ok, and I hoped it was a health class.

Nope. Gym. OK, I can handle this. I know some of the kids, I know how good all the kids are, and I'll have another teacher in there with me the entire time. Piece of cake, right?

Wrong.

This was way, way harder than a typical day. And the kids weren't acting up, either. It's hard becasue you have to do the same thing you do in a classroom: take attendence, give instructions, keep the kids more or less on task and prevent homicide and/or general chaos. But the environment you're doing all this in is very, very different. I mean, hoe. Lee. <Bleep>. Never thought I'd hear myself saying it, but gym teachers work a LOT harder than classroom teachers do. Seriously.

Gyms are noisy. Crazy noisy. I knew that, like I said. I fully expected to have my ears hurting. What I didn't take into account was how loud I would have to be to be heard over the noise. By second period my ears hurt, my throat *really* hurt, and I was starting to go hoarse. I had never fully appreciated a PE teacher's voice. They can hollar at the top of their lungs (which sounds like a conversational volume) and still manage to inflect emotion. You can tell if they're mad at you. Me, on the other hand, sounded exactly the same wheather I was saying "Thank you!" or "Cut that out!" The fellow in there with me was wonderful, and had a deep, booming voice that cut through all the echoed chatter. By 4th period, he was herding the kids in my direction, bless him. He had his own kids to deal with.

And we both had a LOT of kids.

That's the second thing I hadn't managed to remember. PE teachers have roughly 45 zillion kids. When I saw the rosters, I stopped counting at 25 kids. We are talking us lots of younguns. I think my smallest class was 26 or so... I'm used to 17-ish (and more comfortable with 5-ish). My group was half the number in the gym at any given time. Until the afternoon, when a third class joined us. (!)

This is really more of a sub problem, but placement was an issue for a couple of classes. They supposedly had predetermined spots on the gym floor, but darned if I knew where they were, and the kids knew I didn't know. In a classroom, I still have that problem, but at least I know they're supposed to be in chairs. I'm pretty sure the large chunks of people weren't allowed... the other side of the gym didn't have any... but I didn't even know where to point the misbehavors to! :blush:

Finally, there's the activity level. In a classroom, it's easy: "siddown an' shuddup." In a gym, they're not supposed to do either... but you can't have them going totally nuts. The happy medium is really hard to pinpoint and even harder to maintain.

Oddly, I'm really not complaining. Seriously. I'm just in total awe of the brave teachers who take on a bunch of kids and make them move. It's difficult physically, it's difficult mentally, and it's not easy socially. I will never think a coach has an easy job again... it's far more than twirling a whistle.

If you're a PE teacher and you're reading this, you rock, and you score. Wow your job is hard. Much praise and whatnot - you deserve it!

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 5:52 pm

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Very amusing!

PE must be somewhat different out there. I take the kids out (usually) once a day before lunch for twenty minutes or so for a run, game, something vaguely athletic and it always starts with a lap of the oval. Wear them out as soon as possible!

Mind you... we don't have a gym... that would echo with more than one group. Good luck! At least you can revert to Poison Ball or whatever your equivalent there is and get some frustration out by throwing big heavy balls at kids!

And what's this about usually have 17 kids in a grade or even only 5??

LUXURY MATE! LUXURY!! Very Happy

Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 8:25 am

Dutch wrote:

And what's this about usually have 17 kids in a grade or even only 5??

LUXURY MATE! LUXURY!! Very Happy

Don't I know it! Very Happy

It's not per grade, really... just per class. And even then it's usually much closer to the 17. Five in a class is average for special education classes. The only place I've ever gotten lucky enough to have 5 in a grade was at a private school... about 40 students, K-12.

Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 8:51 am

Special Education? Do they still do that? We've got Integration... although it's probably called something else now that's not politically incorrect but probably will be in five years time when they'll be called something else instead.

25 a grade for me on average. Think my smallest was 24, but you always pick up new kids through the year. Started with 31 my first year out... largest grade in the school too.

Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 10:43 pm

Dutch wrote:

Special Education? Do they still do that? We've got Integration... although it's probably called something else now that's not politically incorrect but probably will be in five years time when they'll be called something else instead.

25 a grade for me on average. Think my smallest was 24, but you always pick up new kids through the year. Started with 31 my first year out... largest grade in the school too.

Yeah, we still have Special Education in the states. I'm not sure if it's equivalent to what you're thinking of, though. We're talking special-needs children, or rather those with either reduced mental capacity and/or reduced social capacity. Basically you'd get your moderately autistic children in here, your children with Downs Syndrome, things of that nature. These are referred to as "Special Needs" and they're separated from the bulk of the children for a variety of reasons. The Junior High School (Grades 7 and 8) that I went to had a Special Needs school on premises but completely fenced off from our school, so that basically we rot little bastards wouldn't torment the poor children.

I had no such inclination, but I seriously couldn't say the same for the majority of my classmates.

Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 4:51 pm

We have an odd mixture of integration (we call it "inclusion") and old-fashioned "special education." Basically, how far removed a kid is from the rest of the population depends on how much his/her disability affects him/her.

It's possible (and very common) to have kids that are in "all inclusion" classes, but they still are allowed things like spell-checks. This allowance is part of the special education. On the flipside, we do have completely separate schools for kids who still wear diapers in their teens.

Probably the most common, though, is to put kids in some inclusion classes and put them in smaller special ed classes for things like reading and math.

And then there's co-teaching... but I hesitate to explain that because I think the "experts" are still trying to figure it out themselves!