St. Mary's Stars

Last semester I officially entered the Physical Education block and was a student in Dr. Yang’s PED 201 class, Motor Development. In Motor Development our class went to St. Mary’s Elementary to assist with the St. Mary’s Stars after school program about eight times throughout the semester. This gave me my first chance to instruct children as a Physical Educator. During our time at St. Mary’s we were each given the opportunity to get our feet wet and lead our own activities with the students of St. Mary’s. Our challenge was to engage the children in games that involved the particular motor movement that we were given each day such as a hop, skip or throw. This experience helped build my confidence while gaining various strategies that I have found to be successful in grasping the attention of children. This semester I was given the opportunity to go back to St. Mary’s, this time as a Lab Assistant. I was able to use the knowledge that I learned through my own experience in Motor Development to mold SUNY Cortland’s next class of Physical Educators. Going back to St. Mary’s as a T.A. this time helped me further built on what I learned last semester as a student in Motor Development. This time however, I was able to see the gym from a different prospective. Instead of leading activities myself I was able to observe Dr. Yang’s 201 class leading games. I watched the students come across some of the same struggles that my fellow students and I found ourselves battling last semester. Some of these struggles included finding age appropriate games for the children, keeping the instruction to a minimum and most of all gauging the children’s attention. In both of my experiences I found one common theme, maintaining the children’s attention was the most difficult challenge of all. The children react best when they are given the chance to use their imaginations and when there are neat props to grasp their attention. Dr. Yang, my fellow T.A.’s and I continued to press this idea with the 201 students throughout the semester. The students of 201 responded very well. Throughout the semester I saw unbelievable improvement from the class. This was illustrated at our last meeting at St. Mary’s when the students all designed Christmas activities for the children. The students of 201 were extremely creative with their ideas and it showed by the kids interactions in the activities. Overall, I was proud of everyone’s improvement throughout the semester and I hope all the students will continue their success throughout their years here at SUNY Cortland. I feel that my second experience at St. Mary's was even better than the first. It helped me further reiterate on all that I learned last year and it was very gratifying to be able to help my fellow peers improve on their abilities.