26C.6563.8, PE Central, Conquering Your First Year as a New PE Teacher

Course Purpose:

The purpose of this course is to help new physical education teachers understand what their first year of teaching may look like so that they not only survive but thrive. Students will also examine current practices, lesson plans, and class setups that will help them successfully navigate their first year of teaching.

Course Description:

Being a first-year teacher can be a scary prospect. One can learn all the theories available about teaching, practice teaching on classmates, and put theory into action in the safety of a student teaching environment. But nothing can prepare a new physical educator for the moment when they actually stand in front of students, manage student behavior, work with administrators of all stripes, and interact with parents in multiple situations. Your first year will be overwhelming and exhausting at times. Plus, there is paperwork, grading, equipment, and many other little intricacies to consider that a first-year teacher can only learn to manage through experience.

This course is designed to help new physical educators navigate the world of a new school and experience a smoother and more successful first year. This is accomplished by presenting detailed survival tips on many topics of concern expressed by new physical educators entering the teaching arena and first-year teachers finishing their inaugural year.

This course provides first-year physical educators with a comprehensive amount of information that they won’t find just anywhere. This includes invaluable insights and tips on how to behave in a professional teaching environment, how to effectively manage the classroom, how to prevent and manage discipline problems, and how to interact with school staff and the community. In addition, this course offers lesson planning ideas for your first day and week of teaching and challenges students to create their own gym class setup as part of a cumulative project. Students will walk away with a plan and a feeling of ultimate preparedness for their first year as a physical education teacher.

Course Goals:

On completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Understand various factors that affect the first year for a physical educator
• Identify what it means to be a professional twenty-first-century educator
• Identify practical skills needed to manage a classroom
• Identify ways to prevent, manage, and solve classroom problems
• Understand and explain how to effectively collaborate with others in the school and community
• Design lesson plans for the first day and week of teaching
• Design and describe a highly effective gym class setup