Field Experience 3/16/2012

In today's lesson, the kids had a small "break" between pickle-ball and the start of the project adventure unit that the class would be starting next week. In today's lesson, the students were separated into two groups, the boys were with us and our master teacher, and the girls were with the other master teacher. The boys were doing yoga/stress management while the girls were doing self-defense.

Today's blog is going to focus on my reflection of the lesson. The first part of the lesson our master teacher had the boys play cross fire, which is just another version of dodge-ball. At first I was thinking, we should never play this game in a physical education class, but then she informed us that since they were doing stress management and yoga, she let them play a game that she knew they never get to play in class in order to make a compromise with them to behave. She also informed us that this was the only time she has allowed a class play this game. At first I kind of thought she was bribing her students, but the more I think about it, it is a smart idea. Yoga and stress management is all about relaxation, and lowering your energy levels. By allowing the boys to exercise their energy out of them before doing this exercise, our host teacher was making it so she had better control of the classroom.

Our host teacher did an excellent job of opening up the lesson on yoga. She went through and explained what stress was and gave examples of how different people deal with it. I expected the boys to still have to much energy, but surprisingly though the exercise I only had to remind them once to be quiet and pay attention. Most of the boys got into the relaxation and a couple of them had actually fell asleep.