“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, December 20, 2011

Teaching Observation Day 2

           Today was another successful day of observing.  Along with observing and assisting the students and teacher, I got to interview two students to get to know a little bit more about them.  One student who I interviewed was an ESL student or English as a Second Language student.  These are students who come to an English speaking school where their first language was something other than English.  He was a Korean student who spoke Korean mostly at home, and preferred it over English.  I asked him a little bit on how he got help and he said that he has a teacher who helps him with his English, and when he needs help he asks his teachers or his fellow students.  He said they are all very helpful.  I also asked him if his teachers were very clear or clear enough with directions and he said that yes they were for the most part.  Lastly, I asked him what his favorite subject was and he said PE because he has a lot of fun and gets good exercise.
        Another student who I interviewed today was a girl who did not participate much in class today.  I asked her what she didn't like about PE and she said that she didn't like that she had to change clothes.  She said that her teachers often encourage her to change so that she can participate.  After all the negativity, I asked her if she liked anything at all about PE and she said that she liked throwing the football around and spending time in the fitness center.  It seemed to me as though her biggest problem wasn't getting involved or participating it was the fact that she doesn't like to get changed.  My host teacher saw me talking to her and after said that she has some social issues and often they let her change in the bathroom or after the other girls leave.  It all made sense after I talked to him and realized it, and know what to expect in the future because I'm bound to run into these kinds of circumstances.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Teaching Observation Day 1

        Today I started my 60 hours of 100 hours that I need for teaching observation at Potsdam Central High School.  Even though I did not attend there,walking through high school doors brought back good memories and I was excited for what I had in store for today.  This week's unit that is being covered is "Scooter Hockey".  It is a lot like hockey in a sense, except for they are on scooters and the sticks they have or only about a foot tall because they have to play sitting down.  It looked like a lot of fun and my host teacher signed a bunch of passes for students to attend PE instead of their study hall (as long as they are passing all subjects they can).  I used to do that back in Junior High whenever I had a study hall and no homework to do.  When I was in elementary, I used to be one of those kids who would pretend to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water because I didn't like sitting for long periods of time.  I also too liked getting passes and would often do so in middle school so I could do something active rather than sit in a study hall, so I could relate to these students. They also offered participation in the weight room as well if students did not choose to want to do scooter hockey for this unit.  There they have forms in which they have to do different exercises relating to cardio and weight training.  Most of the time disengaged students generally pick the weight room because they do not have to be as active, however all the students that I saw were fairly active, or more active than I thought would be.  Some of them do not put a whole lot of effort in, however, they are getting more in the weight room than they would sitting on the bleachers of the gym, or just sitting in the weight room.  I see the weight room option as a positive aspect not negative, whereas I would see some people seeing it just as negative.  I think getting those disengaged students to do a little bit of physical activity is better than none at all.
       Both my host teacher and the girl's PE teacher are also graduates of Cortland as well, so in the off time in between classes we had a lot to talk about and relate to.  Today I mostly observed in all the classes just to get a feel for how my teacher taught and what to be expecting for the next few days.  I filled out one form evaluating different teaching elements also, and did some planning and organizing for the other tasks I will be performing throughout the week.  Looking forward to what is in store for tomorrow!

Monday, December 12, 2011

SUNY Cortland Professional Portfolio Showcase

          A few days ago I attended the SUNY Cortland Professional Portfolio Showcase to see how the top PE students' professional portfolios looked like.  Out of about 200 students, about 15 or so were selected to showcase their portfolios and their accomplishments.  In these portfolios, students showcase their skills, knowledge, and contributions to Physical Education.  I wanted to take a look because I will be handing in my finished portfolio in a year, and want to be one of those students standing showing off their portfolio.  I got a lot of great ideas from looking at these great portfolios and they were really nice to look at.  In everyone students' portfolio they must obtain a resume, a philosophy about teaching and coaching, explain and show how they have achieved elements of the six NASPE (National Assocation for Sport and Physical Education) standards, show certifications, and also portray their professional developments.  All of the portfolios that I saw were very impressive and made me only want to strive more to be not only one of those students next year, but also to have a better portfolio.  Portfolios are a great way to brag about yourself and showcase your skills and let's employers know what you bring to the table.  If the time and effort are put into them then it is going to pay off in the long run.  The difference between a great portfolio and an average portfolio can be the difference between getting a job or not, so it is important to put the time and effort in.  I also think that if you are not going to do your best, then you shouldn't do it at all, and that applies for this as well.  Overall, I think this is a great tradition and idea that SUNY Cortland does.  It is just another way that SUNY Cortland helps prepare students for the future and shows how they are one of the top PE programs in the country. (below are some pictures taken from SUNY Cortland Professional Portfolios)

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

A Very Merry Lab 6

          This week was our last week at Saint Mary's school where we had a Christmas theme for the children.  There were no specific skills that were focused on today so it was up to my fellow peers to come up with games that involved skills that we had practiced and played throughout the semester.  My group was the special projects group and what we did was decorate the gymnasium doors with collages that myself and my fellow peers made.  We did a nice Christmas theme with green and red construction paper and placed the collages creatively on the door and also wrote our names and a little thank you to the school for allowing us to have such great experiences there.
         One thing that I did notice throughout the semester is how much I enjoy helping younger children out.  I originally thought that older kids such as Junior High and High School was the rout that I wanted to go, however after the few weeks that I spent at Saint Mary's my view has definitely changed.  It is so fun to be around kids who are always happy and enthusiastic about just be active.  Rarely did we ever find kids who didn't want to be doing something physically active.  They may not have wanted to play the same game, however we could generally find some way or game to get them involved into something.  It can be a challenge sometimes getting them to play a game that you want to play, however I am a person who likes challenges and I would definitely enjoy helping kids with their motor development and getting them introduced to healthy active lifestyles that hopefully they could continue for the rest of their lives.  Effective Physical Education needs to start at the elementary stage and this is something that I want to be more and more a part of as time has been going on.

Friday, November 25, 2011

New York State AHPERD Conference

       This past weekend I made a trip to Verona, NY to attend the New York State Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance Conference held at the Turning Stone Casino.  I had a great time and learned a lot of cool things.  One session that I went to taught us about the game of rugby, and how it could be incorporated into Physical Education.  A big reason why I wanted to go to this session was because rugby is such a growing sport in this country, and I have seen it on television yet I did not know the rules or any game play whatsoever.  I wanted to be able to learn how the game was so I could watch a game more enjoyably knowing the different rules and tactics that the teams performed and why they performed them.  This was the first thing that Professor Jeff Walkulski and two other SUNY Cortland students taught us because they knew that a lot of other people were in the same boat as I was.  After going over the basic rules, they told us how we could incorporate into the classroom using a "touch" style of play, rather than tackling.  They showed us multiple activities that went over basic skills such as passing and team movement.  I liked doing the activities because I enjoy being more active with students.  I would rather be doing an activity and having the kids learning, rather than sitting at a desk all day.  Thus, This is a big reason why I chose PE.  Most of the drills they had were not too difficult to teach either, therefore would be easy to teach to students because they would be just like us and being just introduced to the game.  Overall I enjoyed this session, I walked out knowing a lot more about the game and I hope to see it transform into PE programs across the country

         Another session that I really enjoyed was a Lacrosse teaching session that was taught by two Syracuse University lacrosse players.  When I was reading through the classes that were being taught at the same time as this, I came across that it was lacrosse which is a sport I love and would love to coach, and that it was being taught by Syracuse University Lacrosse players which I thought was awesome.  The two players that taught the session were Gairet Myers and JoJo Marasco.  I knew of JoJo because I am a huge Syracuse lacrosse fan so I chatted with him throughout the session because when we were doing the drills he noticed that I had played before so we reminisced about high school and college lacrosse.  The majority of the session dealt with basic skills such as passing, catching, obtaining ground balls, and shooting.  They taught the people at the session the correct ways in which to do them, and then showed us multiple activities in which they could incorporate each skill.  Overall I had a blast at this session even though I already knew how to do the basic skills the correct way because I played lacrosse, however, some of the drills and activities we did I had not seen before so I still learned a great deal.  
       Overall I think the Conference was awesome, and whatever PE students/teachers that decided not to go missed out.  There is so much information that can be learned at these conferences that can only make your lessons and activities better and you overall as a better PE advocate!

Monday, November 14, 2011

Thanksgiving Day Fun and Games at St. Mary's (Lab 5)

Most people in the world do not like Mondays because it marks the start of the week, however I enjoy Mondays because I get to go play and interact with the students at St. Mary's.  This lab's theme was Thanksgiving because it is roughly about a week away, therefore, many of the games that we created for the students revolved around that theme.  Our focus for motor skills this week was dribbling and kicking.


             
               When we were assessing, we looked at key things such as if the students were using their fingers to dribble, or were slapping the ball and also where the ball was in regards to where it landed on the floor and how high it bounced in regards to their body.  Also with the kicking, I noticed that a good amount of what we had to assess dealt with the opposite foot of the kicking foot.  My contribution to lab 5 was creating a game at the end for the whole class.  I decided on a game called Turkey Tag where I had two people it (Pilgrims), and their job was to tag the turkeys (other students).  Now since this was a Thanksgiving theme it is obvious why I came up with these roles and the name, however I wanted to incorporate the motor skills of the day as well.  I created the game so it had two helper turkeys which can help turkeys who have been tagged.  They have to dribble the ball around until they find a turkey in need (which will be gobbling to signal they have been tagged) and then they will put the ball on the ground and kick it to the turkey.  After, the helper turkey now becomes a regular turkey, and the turkey who was just saved is now the helper turkey.  I made it so they switch so that more people would be able to practice the motor skills instead of just two people per game.  Overall I had a blast again at St. Mary's and feel as though everyone in the class including myself is enjoying themselves, have become more comfortable, and have learned a lot.  I came to Cortland primarily thinking that I would want to teach Middle school to High School kids, however this class has definitely made me think twice about this because of my enjoyment with the younger kids has changed my perspective entirely.  It is a lot of fun and rewarding seeing kids develop and helping them do that, especially when you have kids who are so enthusiastic like the ones that I have been involved with!



Monday, October 31, 2011

Lab 4

         Today was Lab 4 at Saint Mary's, however today was not like the other days at St. Mary's.  Today was a special day that every kid enjoys at the end of October.  You know what I'm talking about, Halloween.  The kids were even more full of energy today than the past few weeks because the games we had today revolved around Halloween, thus making them more excited.  Even though it might have been more hard work to keep them settled down when need be, I enjoyed seeing the kids happy to play the games because I know how happy I was when I was their age and hope they get the same experiences I got.  I had the Pre-K kids this week so I had to observe another group as they created games to help us assess their throwing and catching.  The big things we focused on this week was when they were throwing that they made the T formation, stepped with their opposite foot, and followed through.  Also with the catching, it was important where their elbows were, if there hands were out ready to catch the ball, and if they could catch the ball with just their hands or if they needed help from their legs, chest, or other parts of the body.

           After the assessing, my group went into the classroom where we played games, read, and conversed with the students.  My first try at playing with a group of kids was denied when they told me that "They didn't want me to play" ha.  I tried to find out why and ask them some questions so that they might forgot or find a way to include me.  They were playing house so I asked questions of who everyone was and what they were doing.  One girl told me that she was making baby food and that she would tell me when it was ready ha.  I said OK and thank you, so I went to another group who was drawing pictures.  One girl was drawing a duck so I talked to her about that and then she asked me to draw an elephant, so I did so, and she found it amusing which made me happy.  After that, Ryan, my TA Eric, and I played a card matching game with a few of the students.  This became very popular and we got more kids to join as time went on.  By the end of the game it was time for snack so the kids had their cookies and milk.  After, one student wanted me to read him a book so I read him a few pages and interacted and asked him questions about the book until it was time to go to the gym.  There Julia had a spider web activity that we did and I introduced my game to the children.  At first the children didn't really abide by the rules of the game, however after a few minutes or so and with help of my group we got the game going, and the motor skills that I incorporated into my game were practiced.  By the end of the game, I noticed how some students definitely improved.  I think it is because a lot of them didn't know how to throw correctly, so we taught them how repetitively, and it got them in kind of a groove where they would just do it automatically without us telling them.  It was great to see the improvement!

My Lab 4 Assessments

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Lab 3

       Lab 3 was a blast!  The theme for the lab was Sports, and a lot of the college students participated in the theme which was awesome.  I wore my Cristiano Ronaldo Portugal Soccer jersey which caught the eye of one student who likes soccer.  He came up to me and said, "even though I don't like Ronaldo, I still really like your shirt".  I thought it was nice of him to say and also got me to find something that I had in common with him which was an interest in soccer, so myself and another student talked to him for a little bit about soccer.  My group created the games so that our peers could assess the other students based on the skills they were to observe.  Ryan had a cool game where the kids had to get bean bags and then put them in the hoola hoop.  My team was the yellow hoola hoop and we did pretty good.  One thing that I tried implementing to them was counting, so I told them after every time we are going to count them to see if we beat the other teams.  My game was called Alligator Alley which revolved around the idea of the kids being in a swamp surrounded by alligators, where they had to leap or jump from rock to rock (polyspot).  If they didn't land on one, they could be tagged by an alligator (student with a green noodle).  If they got caught, they had to stay still on a rock for 5 seconds.  Two of the skills were leap and jump so I thought this was a good game for my peers to assess the kids on.


           After all the games, my group went downstairs where the kids had snack.  I found it funny when one kid started dunking his pretzels in milk.  It caught the attention of my TA Eric who thought it was funny.  Since he thought it was funny, it caught the attention of a little girl who then wanted to see if it tasted good, so she started doing it ha!  While we were down there we talked a lot about each others pets.  I learned one girl had 3 dogs and she told me a little about them, and another student had one dog, but he didn't like it.  All in all it was a good lab and I'm looking forward to Lab 4 with the Pre-K students!



My Lab 3 write up

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Coach Herman Boone

             The movie "Remember the Titans" revolves around a school in Alexandria, Virginia that had to integrate the black and white students.  The Titans were the football team of T.C. Williams High School which at the beginning of the school year fired long time and successful (white) Bill Yoast, and hired Herman Boone, who was a black coach from North Carolina.  This brought up even more controversy then just the schools being integrated because many of the white players were upset that their coach had his job taken from him.  Because of this many of them said they would not play, causing Coach Yoast to become an assistant coach to Coach Boone, instead of taking another job.  The team had to overcome adversity because the black and white players did not get along.  It wasn't until Coach Boone took them to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where they went through a gruesome camp that helped unite them in the end.  Coach Boone did things such as having a white and black player room together. (Link to Coach Boone's Speech from Remember the Titans)  He also made each player find out certain information about the others so they could get know more about each other.  By the end of camp, both sides had reconciled their differences and realized that winning to them was more imporant than race.

                  Coach Boone came to SUNY Cortland and gave a speech about the movie, adversity, and the philosophies he believed then entailed being a successful coach.   Being an aspiring coach and a huge fan of the movie, when I first heard this I was so excited and pumped to go to this event.  I learned a lot from what he said and definitely will remember things he said in the future when I become a coach.  He had to overcome being a black coach in a pressurized white society.  He overcame adversity by uniting his multi-raced team and proving to the community that he was worthy of being head coach and that he knew what it truly meant to be a coach.  After his speech, students were allowed to come up and take pictures and get autographs with Coach Boone.  Of course I could not turn down this offer.  As a big fan of the movie I remember in the movie the play he calls at the end to win the championship game: "Fake 23 blast, with a backside George reverse".  So when I went up to shake his hand and get a picture with him, I asked him if that was the real play.  He said yes it was, and then drew it up for me, explained it, and signed it!  I was so pumped and excited that I called multiple people and bragged about it.  After a reporter saw what he had done for me and interviewed me about it. (Click link to read Cortland Standard's story with my interview at the end)  This was a definitely an experience I will never forget!


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.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Lab 2

          Lab 2 was a lot of fun, full of interesting and exciting events that I was not expecting.  In the beginning of class I had to observe some of the younger kids and how they ran, galloped, and hopped.  Some of my peers came up with fun little games where they incorporated that they had to do these types of things and then we would analyze them and see how well they did each of them.  We each had a boy and a girl we had to assess, and with that I marked down whether he/she was doing good in that category, average, or needed some work.  After that my group went outside where we played with the older kids.  They had a big game of tag going which I joined in on.  We played for a little while then another kid decided he wanted to join in however for some reason tagged another person so it got a little confusing and there were two people it instead of just one.  This I thought was funny because even though they noticed something was wrong and would say it, they still kept playing.  After playing tag we went into the gym and I introduced my game to the kids. 

         Since the theme of the week was "Friendship'" I chose a game I called Chain Tag where you were only safe if you chained your arm with your partner, thus trying to incorporate friendship.  If you got tagged, you had to sit down and then someone could get you back in if they tagged your hand.  So I thought this was a good idea because you get a partner which could symbolize friendship, and if you thought you were going to get caught then you could find your partner and try to chain yourselves before you got caught.  This game turned out pretty good, it seemed as though all the kids liked it.  I was surprised because I noticed the last time I was there that there were two kids who didn't really like playing that much, however, they participated in my game which surprised me and made me happy.  After my games the rest of my group introduced their games and we played them as well.  At the end we had all the groups and kids get together and we did the Chicken Dance.  I hadn't done it in a while but it was like riding a bike, once you learn how you don't forget.

 Lab 2

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Are games like Dodgeball acceptable in PE?

For many of us, we grew up playing the classic games like dodge ball and kickball in our PE classes and during recess.  I remember in Junior High one of the most liked activities played by boys and girls was 10 base kickball which was where my teacher set up six mats around the perimeter of the gym, and before you could go home you would have to have been to ten bases.  All the other rules of kickball applied as well.  Dodge ball was always fun as well.  There were always different versions that could be used to modify it a little bit, however you still needed the same skills in order to succeed in each one.  These activities can be fun, however, do they teach kids how to be physically educated?  How do you assess them in these games?  How do you set up lesson plans in order to teach these games?  Those are all questions I would ask because I don't feel as though they are acceptable in Physical Education.  For example, in basketball you could teach dribbling skills, shooting skills, passing skills, and rules regarding the game.
                   
With dodge ball however I feel as though it would be harder because the only skills are throwing and catching a round ball.  Also, the rules are that you either catch the ball or avoid it if you are being attacked, or you throw the ball at your opponent.  With that being said, you can basically teach the game of dodge ball in less than five minutes.  How do you assess someone in this circumstance?  If they make it to the last five left they pass?  If they can correctly catch the ball?  Sounds a little bit too hard for me.  On the contrast, in basketball you could see if they were shooting right by looking at where there hands were and how they followed through for example.  The only way I could see myself allowing games like these to be played was if I had a substitute and the lesson I was teaching was too tough for them.  However, I feel as though I could come up with a better list of activities for a substitute in which my students would be getting better physically educated and maybe not sitting "out" or on the sideline, instead of constantly being involved.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2010/5/19/1274280336557/Ben-Stiller-in-Dodgeball-006.jpg

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Fundamental Skills, Assessment, and Health

Fundamental skill development and assessment are very important to Physical Education.  Many schools in the past have viewed Physical Education, or what I like to call a lazy version of PE "gym class" as a chance for teachers to take a break from their students, and often devote some of their time to lesson planning while their students can run around and play for a little bit.  Even as a child, I viewed gym class, and I'm calling it gym class because that's what I viewed it as then and now, because I saw it as a second recess because we literally didn't learn any skills or develop anything.  We simply played games such as tag, soccer, basketball, etc.  Those are things I played at recess as well.  We had competitions as well, however, how can you assess a competition necessarily.  Just because one person may win does not necessarily mean that they are physically educated.  That is why there are national standards which are put into place, so that students can be assessed based on how much they know about being physically educated.  One organization is NASPE, or National Association for Sport and Physical Education.  They created the National Standards for Physical Education which was designed to provide guidance for teachers who are trying to physically educate students (www.aahperd.org/naspe)  By having national standards, this then makes it easier for teachers to create curriculums and benchmarks so that students will know so much information by a certain time.  One way that this is done is on a scale from 1-4, 4 being the highest.  If the student meets all the requirements of a certain skill then they receive a 4. For example if the task is to properly serve a tennis ball, the key elements may be that they throw the ball high enough, put the racket in the back scratch position, hit the ball with their arm fully extended, and hit the ball 5 out of ten times in the volley zone, then they get a four.  If they most of them and can use a little improvement they might get a 3.  If they need help and can only do a couple of those elements then they may get a two.  If they get a one then they need to practice a lot more and are no where close.

                                                        
Because of all of this, it is important to start young and by having these National Standards we can do so.  Health is a big issue, especially in this country where a good amount of our population is obese.  If students can be taught how to live a healthy lifestyle then we can decrease this national epidemic.  Many schools now have students create their own fitness plans so it helps students understand the importance of  health safety.  I feel as though through NASPE and other organizations that PE is headed in a great direction and students now are attending more PE classes and not "gym" classes so they are becoming more physically educated than students of the past.

        vs.                            

(http://www.flickriver.com/groups/anti-mcdonalds/pool/interesting/)
(http://alv0808.blogspot.com/2011/06/secrets-of-life.html)

Lab 1

My observations for Lab 1

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

First blog

This summer I didn't get to do as much physical activity as I would have liked outside of work, however, at work I would always get a lot of physical activity.  This summer I worked for the Residence life department at SUNY Potsdam where Mondays through Fridays myself and six of my friends were given different assignments moving different types of dorm furniture and other miscellaneous campus moving objections.  The toughest morning I would say we had was when myself and four others moved 280 twin mattresses in less than two hours.  If you can imagine what the twin mattresses in the dorms are, my crew and I had to move 280 of them off a truck into a dorm, where we later were assigned to move them into other dorms/rooms.  Besides work, I worked out about 4-5 times every week around 7 pm after dinner to get in some muscle building.  I like to lift weights a lot.  It is a good exercise and helps a lot with stress.  One of the things I am very interested here at SUNY Cortland is becoming a personal trainer so I can help others achieve their goals and also so I can learn more about lifting weights myself.