“How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal, and you have to be willing to work for it.” - Jim Valvano

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

SUNY Cortland PE Mini Conference/Leadership Conference

SUNY Cortland just recently held a New York State Association for Health Physical Education Recreation and Dance () mini conference where dozens of presenters, teachers, professors, and students from the central New York state area got together and attended or presented sessions that revolved around the theme of "How Exercise, Learning, and the Brain can Transform Teaching from the Inside Out".  While attendees waited in the gym for the keynote speaker Dr. Sarah Armstrong, many SUNY Cortland students and myself performed a flash mob titled "Cortland Rock", retitling the song by LMFAO "Party Rock".  Click the link to see the video!!    ( Link to Cortland Rock PE Flash Mob video )  Besides listening to the keynote speaker and performing in the flash mob, I attended three sessions.  The first session I attended was called "Active Health", which was a session taught by SUNY Cortland Professor Helena Baert.  The concept of this class was to incorporate healthy life skills into games which teachers could use to help their students learn more about healthy life skills such as proper dieting, hygiene, and exercise.  One of the games I liked was called plaque attack which was a form of tag where if you got tagged, you had to have one person who was a toothbrush and one person who was toothpaste come to you and then you were OK to play again.  I liked this session a lot because when I become a teacher, I want to incorporate more into my lessons about eating and living healthier and being more aware and educated about health.  The second session I attended was at the Exergame Lab run by SUNY Cortland Professor Stephen Yang.  I had a lot of fun at this lab.  The idea of this was to incorporate fitness into video games.  As many people know, a lot of kids do not get very good exercise, and sitting in front of the television playing video games doesn't help.  One area that has increased in video games however is health and fitness games for video games.  One game that I liked was a biking game where a stationary bike was connected to a Playstation where you controlled the speed of a car by how fast you pedaled the bike, and you steered the car with the handlebars.  Another cool game I liked involved steps that you had to walk on in order to play the Xbox 360 NBA video game.  It made you constantly move your feet while you were playing.  By the end of all the games I played I was sweating bullets!  The third session I went to involved Ipads and other Apple products and how you can find different apps to help with teaching and health.  Some of the cool apps I liked involved calorie counters, different muscle workouts, and a voice recorder that could record what you say and then type it.  All in all it was a great conference I thought and can't wait for the next one!
                         After that conference, I attended the SUNY Cortland Student Leadership Conference.  There I met multiple former and current PE teachers who gave presentations on different areas of leadership and how to help make yourself better in regards to teaching and leading others.  One of the sessions I really enjoyed was performed by former PE teacher John Smith.  He taught us several simple games that can be done to help kids with their flexibility, coordination, and teamwork.  I attended the workshop because I have always been a leader, and as a leader I feel as though you can always improve to make yourself better, which then in return can help improve others.  This I feel should be a philosophy of all teachers.  I would like to become an orientation leader here at SUNY Cortland during the summer and I feel as though this definitely helped me.  Also in regards to that, I am an aspiring coach and I believe as a successful coach you not only have to be a leader on the field, but off the field too.  By attending this conference I learned how to improve myself as a coach off the field because a lot of my philosophies as a coach in years to come are going to be not only teaching my students and players how to kick a soccer ball, or shoot a slap shot, but how to become better people in general, and hopefully one day might say, "Mr. Henrie really helped me out a lot these past years.  I learned a lot about life and how to persevere because of him."  This is one of my goals as a teacher, and hearing words like these will make it all worth while and be one of the biggest reasons why I chose a profession like this.

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