My passion in dancing

Entering the fraternity as an untrained contract teacher, I had one philosophy that I held close to myself. ‘As long as my students put in the effort and try their best, I will help them enjoy and be better at PE and that every student is important to me regardless of their background’. Guided by this personal philosophy, I went into teaching making sure that every one of my students felt cared for in my classes, and that I value effort not just results, as PE lessons are for learning, and not just competing.

Throughout the three different schools that I have had the pleasure of teaching at, one thing was constant throughout. There were always students that would find any excuse or reason to sit out of PE lessons, be it because they did not enjoy the subject or were not confident in executing a skill and did not want to be ridiculed by their classmates. This was a sight that broke my heart over the past 2 years while attached to the different schools, and I wanted to be the change. The change that would help students see that Physical Education is about learning and acquiring new skills and less of competing to see who is the best, and that every student has a place in my class.

At first, some students sat on the sides whenever the activity was taking place. I started off by asking them one by one to join the groups while I was walking around the class to give feedback and observe gameplay. I figured that the students already had an objection to the lesson and had a preconceived notion of what they disliked about PE, and adding an overbearing teacher might hinder things instead of helping them. So I decided on a softer approach, making conversation with these students, learning about their lives and building Teacher-Student Relationships. Through these little conversations, I discovered why they had an aversion to the subject and it helped me to circumvent the issue in future lessons as these students started to see my heart for them and realised that PE is a fun subject where they can learn new things, improve on existing skills, and build their confidence in the skills they acquire.

It took much effort on my end to plan out the lessons to include and make sure all my students enjoyed learning in PE, but it was all worth it when I saw that everybody in my classes were participative and enjoyed the games regardless of their skill levels. One girl in particular stood out to me as she once told me that she would rather do her Chinese assessment book instead of attending the lesson as she found PE to be boring and that she was not going to be good at it no matter how hard she tried. At the end of my Teaching Practice 2, I received a note from her which said ‘Thank you for teaching me PE. I really hope you’ll come back. I know I told you I didn’t like PE but you made it better! Thank you!’ This note motivated me as I took this as a positive feedback for the little changes that often go unnoticed to improve my lessons so as to include my students and make their lives better, and for them to enjoy the subject that I am passionate about just a little bit more. At the end of the day, seeing all my students participate and engage actively in my lessons puts a smile on my face.