Confessions and getting moving

I have a confession to make...this is 16 year in the making. When I was 24 and teaching down in Bloomington, Illinois, I had a bout of food poisoning. It was 4 days of agony and I was stuck and home and missing work. One morning at 6 a.m., after I dropped off my lesson plans, I wandered into a store quickly and was looking for a small diversion from my gastronomical torture. I saw the blue Pokemon game for Gameboy. I knew that I still had my Gameboy and it was in working order. After getting over my initial embarrassment of being 24 years old, I figured no one else was around, either in the store or my apartment, and I purchased a child's game.

It only took a few ticks of the clock and I was hooked playing it. I enjoyed the questing nature of the game and being able to wander around digitally and encounter all kinds of new beasts and watching them grow, battle, and evolve. At the time, I was wondering if I could use Pokemon as method of helping students understand evolution in my biology class. (I subsequently decided against that instructional strategy because it was a poor illustration at best as an attempt to get students to let go of their preconceived notions of evolution already).

Well, I feel better getting that off my chest. Why, now, do I choose to confess my embarrassment from 16 years ago? You guessed it, because of the week long buzz on the newest app to go viral, Pokemon Go.

I have recently changed schools and districts. In my previous district, I had a great cohort of people and we would walk on the track together to get moving and to get healthier. We were able to do this for about 5 weeks, between the time the students were let out of school and when I moved to my new district. Now that I am in my new position, it is a little harder to find time and a group to walk and get moving again. Plus, I am learning a new staff, schedule, and working on a ton of things at once. It is a great opportunity, but I did want to keep up my moving and not being in a seated position so much.

So, I did what 10 million other people did and downloaded the app. My wife ridiculed me and said, you are going to let the kids play that, right? I replied, sure...sure I would. Here is what I have noticed in my short time with the game:

• I have actually had a desire to get up, even when tired, to walk around the neighborhood. Granted, it is with my phone in my hand, but it would be anyway to listen to music or look at other things if I am walking alone.
• I have noticed groups of children, young adults, and full grown adults, walking around in groups, outside. And yes, there are times when faces are buried in phones, but most of the people written in groups are running/walking together, talking, sharing their experiences, smiling, and laughing.
• I can understand how people might get hurt playing this game, because I walked into a low hanging branch, so watch out... :)
• Kids have their faces glued to their screens and we, as educators, should help use this fact to engage students in all forms of learning.

Based on the above observations, schools need to find a way to incorporate this crazed idea into the physical education programs. I had this thought when I downloaded the app and started playing, and then I looked for other people who had the same idea. In the past 4 days, there  have been almost 20 tweets using #physed and #PokemonGo in the tweet. (See them for yourself) This is a growing idea and we should be capitalizing on it.

Some thoughts I have on this and how to use it:

• If there is a PokeStop close to your school, have PE teachers purchase a lure and activate it and tell the kids to catch as many Pokemon as they can. Students need to run to the stop and then run back after catching a Pokemon. Make it like s shuttle run. Students can collect data on their run and earn "points" for Pokemon caught and bonus points for new Pokemon caught. Students would need to record their data and try to improve their results day-to-day.
• Have students run/walk around the track/football or soccer field/campus to search for Pokemon. Based on the Pokemon they catch, they must do the following:
• Grass-type = 10 jumping jacks
• Water-type = 10 sit-ups
• Electric-type = 10 push-ups
• Bug-type = 10 squats
• Flying-type = 30 second high knee run in place
• Fire-type = 5 burpees
• Any other = 10 leg lifts
• While I have not looked at it yet, there is even someone who wrote something else to engage the students in their physical activity. 

We have a nation of children who are dangerously sedentary. We need to engage students in life-long physical activities. Ones that will help students, and even adults like me, find enjoyment in just getting out and going for a walk. To quote Rob Goodman, "Any game that gets people off their bums and into the real world for physical activity is a success in my eyes." (Posted by @rob_goodman on Twitter, 7/14/2016)

Do you have other ideas? Share them in the comments!

Where is the line?

I am a big proponent of educators utilizing a variety of social media outlets to participate in professional development, engage students in the learning, and maintain open communication lines with stakeholders concerning important events. Having said that, I have had an occurrence that has got me asking the question of where is the line?

My 2 boys (4 1/2 and 2 1/2) both go to school/daycare. It is a WONDERFUL facility with an amazing staff who genuinely care about the social, emotional, and cognitive growth of all of the children who attend. My youngest son is in the 2-3 year old room and, with any child who is exploring the world but can not fully express himself, there are instances where two children will get into a scuffle. Sometimes it is a little hitting or pushing, sometimes biting, but these are isolated incidents and parents are informed of when they occur. All of the rooms are under video surveillance and in order to protect all parties involved, a parent is notified that their child was involved in an incident but is not informed of who the other child is.

I pick my boys up from school in the afternoon and notice that my youngest son has a scrape on his nose and by his eye. I ask the teacher in the room what happened and she did not know. This is not necessarily uncommon because of the shifts that the teachers have during the work day. She went to go check in the office to see if there was a notification and came back to tell me that there was not one. At this point, I go to the office and speak with the directors asking them to check the video to see what had happened because there is one child in the class who has been having some issues in respecting the personal space and belongings of other children. (The only reason why I know this child is because my son tells me who did it when something happens.) The directors apologized that there was no incident report and said that they would look at the video and get back to me.

Here is where my dilemma started...through Facebook, I am connected to many of the teachers' personal pages that my kids had at the school. As I said, they are wonderful people there and like keeping up with the goings on of the school's families, even after they have left a particular class. My quandary was do I contact the teacher directly through Facebook to see what happened.

I remember when I was a second year teacher and a parent called me a home to yell at me about their child's progress (or lack thereof) and to challenge what I was teaching in class. I remained calm, answered all of her concerns, and then politely told her that if she has further questions or concerns that she should contact me at school via phone or email and do not call me at home again. When I received that phone class at my home, I felt attacked and felt that this parent had broken a line of decency, for lack of a better term, because she had made no attempt to contact me at school.

As I was trying to decide if I should send her a private message about the incident, I received one from the director of the daycare indicating that he saw my son fall down (with no one around him) and that seemed to be the only event that could have caused this incident. He further explained in the message that he would speak with the teachers in the room and remind them of reporting policies and procedures.

Since I had a resolution to this incident and it was cause by my son's inherited grace and balance, I did not contact the teacher via Facebook. When I dropped the kids off the next day, the teacher came directly to me and told me what she knew about the incident and showed me the report that was completed, but had not been filed yet.

Should I have contacted the teacher via her personal page? If she had a work email or classroom page, I would have no issue in initiating the contact. When I thought of my own experience, I felt that contacting her via her personal page would be akin to the phone call that I received at home. But what of the director contacting me?

I viewed this as a contact from the school to a parent in which, as a teacher, I would call the home or business number or email an available address to discuss any issue. I did question why he did it via his personal Facebook account, but did not push the matter.

It just raised some questions. Where is the line of appropriate contact? As an educator, I would not want people posting items to my personal page nor calling me at home uninvited. How much training do we provide for our staffs about issues like this? Connecting with parents and students through personal pages? Are mandates and policies needed? Guidelines?

Regardless, education of all is needed in appropriate ways to establish lines of communication in the hyper connected world.

Mayan Childrens Books

So I am reading my Twitter Feed and start seeing posts by Tim Wilhemus with the hashtag #MayanChildrensBooks.

I started to contribute and some of them are so funny, I just had to storify it! Direct Link: http://storify.com/misterabrams/mayan-childrens-books#