Oct. 26, 2015

Summary/ Reflection
Today I went to and the first place that I was sent to was the Gym. When I first arrived in the gym the children, well the third graders, had already began with their class. I introduced myself to Coach Merritt and explained to him that I was from TCC and I was there to do observations. One of the first things that I noticed walking into the gym was that were two students standing at the front next to Coach Merritt in charge of the warm-ups. They called out the exercises and counted them out for their fellow classmates. They did ten of each of exercise which were: push-ups and sit-ups then they would hold the push up position for seconds, after that they would do jumping jacks and while they were doing those jumping jacks they were spelling out something that I could not catch and did not have the chance to ask what they were spelling out. The students then huddled up in front of Coach Merritt where he would give them the instructions on what they would be doing for the class period. He explained to them that they would not be going outside because it had been raining and it was muddy outside. So next he told the students that they will be playing indoor soccer and gave them the options of how they would choose their teams and those options were girl versus boys, teacher versus teacher (him and his assistant), and then they had the choice of choosing their own teams, which of course is the one that all the classes ended up choosing. They had to divide themselves up equally into two teams, a team on each side of the gym. The team would go four at a time one being the goalie, they put the ball in the middle of the gym and once the timer (set at two minutes) began they would start the game, and at the end of the two minutes the next four would go and so forth. That was for every class except the kindergartens played zombie tag where they had four people who started off as zombies and who ever they touched would then become zombies. When I talked to Coach Merritt and asked him about the health and safety in the gym his response was “we are all about the bumps and bruises” he said that most the time they just give them an ice pack unless it needed to be charted and they will then send them to the nurses office.
During the time I spent in gym I loved the interaction between the coach and the students. He played and joked with them but at the same the students knew the time to play and to be serious. There was still that level of respect, you could see the students really enjoyed being around him and being in p.e. in general. They followed the rules. Which I found very surprising because most of the time with younger kids its hard to keep them involved and grasp their attentions but they were well behaved. Both of the coaches made me feel comfortable, there wasn’t any awkwardness. I even got to talk with some of the students.