WESTLOCK – For a Westlock Elementary School gym teacher, the switch to remote education and staying at home didn’t mean an end to physical activity.
Steve McKenna, who’s been a teacher for 18 years, instead decided to put together a phys-ed schedule for the entire school, with grade-by-grade activities.
“With everything that’s going on, I decided to condense phys-ed into two spots a day for the kids. It was a break between some of the other online stuff that they were doing with their teachers.
“I’m trying to do what I can to get them involved, get them active,” said McKenna.
On his phys-ed teacher page, which is brand new, McKenna adds the weekly schedule — also available on the school’s website —and links to YouTube videos that guide each activity.
For Week 1, there’s yoga, dancing, some cardio, and hacky sack basics.
“If you don’t have a hacky sack, I’ve got a link to how you can make one without getting your parents upset.”
Some will continue for several weeks. The yoga instructions McKenna linked to in the first week, which are age-appropriate, include two sets for different age groups and go on for 30 days.
“I’m starting to do challenges now where the kids can video themselves and send them back to me. I’m going to have challenges where they’re out going for walks and they take pictures of themselves, in the backyard playing.”
First on the list was a push-up challenge for Week 2. McKenna filmed himself doing push-ups for 30 seconds and gave everyone until April 10 to submit their own videos with instructions for Google Drive uploads.
“It can be a lot of fun if your sibling’s recording you.”
It’s also not just about the kids.
“There are some of the parents I’ve spoken to, my wife included, with the kids being at home right now, they’re starting to go a little crazy — anything to do to burn off that excess energy that the kids are used to burning off.”
Everything can be done with minimal parental supervision.
“I’m trying to do what I can to promote physical fitness, mental health with kids, as simple as I can, finding activities so that maybe the parents don’t have to find a lot of things, they can just click a link and say ‘OK, let’s try this,’” said McKenna.
Regardless of what happens this school year, McKenna says he’ll continue to put things up on his page.
In the meantime, he’s had to make adjustments like everyone else, and despite the necessity of the school closures, he doesn’t exactly enjoy the empty gym.
“I don’t like it at all. I didn’t get into teaching to sit in front of a computer and to search things like that. I like being in the classroom, I like the interacting, I like the joking,” he said.
“This is a people job, every teacher in here got into teaching because of the people, not to do computer work. You ask any teacher here and they’ll all tell you they miss their students.”
Andreea Resmerita, TownandCountryToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @andreea_res
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