Building Relationships and Relevance: Keys to Student Engagement in PE (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: There's definitely different tools and ways to get students engaged. From your perspective, is there kind of something or a main structure or a way you design your lessons to really captivate that student engagement within your students?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think relationship building is like kind of the standard thing that people talk about, but it's just so important. If you have that relationship with your kids and you really focus on building that, and it's really hard your first year because everybody's new, but then next year, if you guys stay in the same spot, then all the relationships you build this year will carry on, except for the kids that left your school. And so you compound that six years in, and then I have kids that I've taught for the last six years, and we've built a relationship for six years, so it's not that hard for me to motivate them because we understand each other. They walk in at the beginning of the year already knowing my expectations. So I think that's really important, but also just making sure that you have a lesson that flows really well. Like if you were a kid, would you enjoy being in your PE class? And if not, then what are the things you can do to try to make it fun and also relevant to the kids? I always try to explain the relevancy of whatever lesson we're doing. Even if a kid doesn't like gymnastics, it's like such a important skill that they can use those skills we learned in gymnastics and any sport that they like. So if one of my basketball kids is like, man, I don't like gymnastics, I'm never gonna do gymnastics. I'll try to explain to them, well, yeah, you will, because you use balance and you have strength and you need flexibility when you play basketball, and it's gonna help you be a better basketball player. So I think understanding how to relate to your kids why what you're teaching them is important will help kind of that motivation and engagement. But I will definitely say it's a lot harder the last three years, getting kids motivated after COVID. So you guys jumped in at a very hard time in education.