As we are entering our 5th week of e-Learning in North Dakota schools, we are beginning to adapt to our new normal. We continue with the uncertainty surrounding seeing our students before the end of this school year. There are a few things we need to be considering:
- Take care of yourself. Many of us have our own children at home, and are juggling helping them while teaching your school children. Be sure to include self-care into your daily routines. Practice what we teach!
- This is a new environment, we need to accept that we might make mistakes, and that we are learning how to teach electronically.
- If you are asking your students to video themselves, be courageous and put yourself on video doing the activities as well.
- Recognize the difference between Physical Education and physical activity. Emphasize this in your lessons. PE is going to look different when we do get back, be sure we make ourselves necessary instead of expendable.
- This is a time when Health Education should be at the forefront. We need our school families to recognize our importance moving forward. Not only learning about infectious diseases, but including self-care, mental health, the importance of physical activity and nutrition for strengthening our immune systems, health advocacy, just to name a few.
Hopefully as we are settling in, we are starting to be more comfortable in the planning of our lessons. If you haven’t checked out SHAPE America’s (our national HPE organization) website for resources, now is a great time to bookmark it. You will find a ton of resources and tutorials to help. Go to: https://www.shapeamerica.org/covid19-resources.aspx to get some great Standards Based activities to add to your lessons, as well as resources for online teaching.
As HPE teachers, we often feel like our own island at our schools, but our current environment is well beyond the isolation we may be accustomed to. To help combat that, ND SHAPE would like to host a weekly Zoom meeting to give us an opportunity to share info, find community, and help us get through the next 4 weeks. Our first Zoom will be this Sunday at 7 pm. Join by using the following link:
Topic: ND SHAPE’s Zoom Member Meeting
Time: Apr 26, 2020 07:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/99682921031
Meeting ID: 996 8292 1031
We will get through this stronger, together!
