“We need to think about our kids being engineers in education, and they’re the ones creating the blue print for us to work from”
Hello and welcome to The PE Umbrella Podcast episode 52, and as always, thank you for giving up your time to join me on the ONLY Primary and Elementary Physed Podcast in the world! The guests keep coming thick and fast and this episode is sure to not disappoint! On the back of the a content filled episode 51 with Aaron Beighle, I am absolutely thrilled to bring you yet another giant in the physed world this week who delivers and then some…
Joining me Under the Umbrella this week is Physed teacher, School Sport Director and IronMan competitor, Andy Hair. As an integral part of the #aussiephysed team, Andy is a real innovator and in his words, seeks to ‘re-engineer education’. If it is passion you seek, then Andy brings it in spades and you will be hooked and intrigued in equal measure as he shares his ideas and concepts this week.
During this bumper episode, Andy shares with us his teaching philosophy, why goal setting is integral in physed, how he pushed his children to take risks that help them grow and how to foster positive relationships with even the trickiest of groups!
What I Learned: There really was so much to take away from this interview with Andy, it is hard to pinpoint just one thing that I learned. However, I do love Andy’s whole spin on Re-engineering education by not conforming to ‘What has always been done’. As he puts it, ‘If we always bake chocolate chip cookies, then we always eat chocolate chip cookies’.
It is all too easy to become comfortable in teaching, especially when you find a routine and activities that ‘work’. We do need to remember though, that our children are always changing and every year we receive a new cohort through our doors! If you become comfortable as a teacher, it is likely you will stop pushing yourself to innovate and to the children, may become predictable. If we ever become predictable as teachers then the children themselves will become comfortable and perhaps worse, bored.
Andy really had me thinking about my own teaching and reflecting on what my lessons really look like on a weekly basis. Am I predictable to the children I teach? I think the honest answer, to some of the children I teach is Yes. For some children, I feel that being predictable is a good thing as they need routine more than others. However, I am now fully aware that there are some children who would benefit from more uncertainty, because, as Andy puts it, with risk taking comes growth!
Moving forward, I feel it is time I look to Re-engineer the way that I teach, moving from 100% predictability to a mixture of predictability and uncertainty…
Top Resources:
Story Book – Why I Love Footy by Michael Wagner
Open Physed – https//openphysed.org
PE Central – https//www.pecentral.org
Top Warm up – Tabata [45:17]
Andy on Goal Setting [19:20]
Class Management Advice [46:21]
Finding Nemo [48:25]
Gavin Bottger (8 Year Old Skateboarder)
Contact:
Twitter – @MrHairPhysEd
Don’t forget to subscribe to The PE Umbrella on iTunes or Stitcher radio by following the links above. It would be amazing if you could rate and review the show there and leave feedback as it will help me further improve the content of the show that I provide for YOU going forward. Have a tremendous week engaging, motivating and inspiring your children, and I’ll catch you next time ‘Under the Umbrella’.
