Common Mistakes PE Teachers Make (and How to Avoid Them)

What's up PE Nation!

Today I share the five critical mistakes PE teachers make based on my 14 years of experience teaching outdoor physical education in Florida, providing practical strategies to avoid these common pitfalls.

• Being inconsistent with rules, procedures, and consequences across different students or classes
• Treating PE as if it were recess rather than establishing clear classroom management
• Poor time management that wastes valuable instructional minutes
• Neglecting educational standards by implementing viral games without curriculum alignment
• Failing to prepare backup plans for unexpected disruptions like weather or facility issues

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Dave

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction
• 2:09 Mistake #1: Inconsistency in Rules
• 5:50 Mistake #2: Lack of Classroom Management
• 7:21 Mistake #3: Poor Time Management
• 11:24 Mistake #4: Neglecting Education Standards
• 14:37 Mistake #5: No Backup Plans
• 19:53 Final Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Super Size Phys Ed podcast. My name is Dave and today I want to talk about mistakes that I've made and I don't want you to make the same mistakes. So these are five mistakes that PE teachers make and how to avoid them. So, without further ado, here we go. All right, pe Nation, welcome in. So I don't always say this, but I want to. You know, for those people who don't know who I am or just stumbled on this podcast which, by the way, I appreciate it I'm a teacher. I'm a PE teacher in Fort Myers Florida. Well, actually I live in Fort Myers Florida, I teach in Estero Florida, which is right next door, and it's all kind of intertangled, so it's basically the same thing. However, I just want to give you background, because I'm going to be talking about some mistakes and some things, and I want you to know that, for the most part, unless you're in a private school or some kind of older or maybe newer school, elementary schools in Florida, at least in my county and most counties are outside we have a pavilion, which we're lucky to have. I've taught in two schools. They both have pavilions and dots for kids to sit on, things like that, but I've seen other places that don't have that or have very little. So I do have an outside facility and that'll preface kind of what we're talking about today, because a lot of these things happen outside not all of them and if you teach inside, this still applies to you at least a lot of it. And again, these are mistakes that I've made in my past and I see it's still made a lot in the PE community and I hopefully it can help you or anyone that you know maybe to do better, because I want to do better for myself and my students and I hope you do as well. So let's make this a boomer.

Speaker 1: 2:11

The first one here we go All right. Number one is inconsistency, and I see this a lot and it could be inconsistency in a lot of things. It could be rules, procedures, which, by the way, we're going to talk about. Number two it could be rewarding certain students but not rewarding others, or punishing certain students or certain grade levels or whoever, and not being consistent with the other grade levels or students. Sometimes we are in a bad mood, us teachers, and we don't always show consistency in how we treat the classes, the students, because we're in a bad mood or if we're not in a bad mood, we change, and I've definitely seen one of my parents does that or has done in the past and it leads to confusion with the kids and they get upset and they're worried and they don't know what to expect. And you know, is he going to be mad, is he not going to be mad, is he going to be, you know, nice today, or whatever. So we have to be consistent and I actually just had this conversation with my one of my paras the other day.

Speaker 1: 3:20

He's a younger para, first year in our school system, in our school day. He's a younger parent, first year in our school system, in our school, and he told me after one of my or one of the lessons that one of the students was not following directions. And we have this conversation quite a bit, but you know, I always tell him, okay, I explain the rules, make sure they're explained clearly and you know, obviously, when they play the game, if they're not following the rules, they get a warning and then after that they have to sit on the bench for two minutes and then they, then you explain to them what happened and then they can get back in the game and he has his own group, his own class, while I have my own class and the other pair has his own class. So you know, I don't know what's going on until he kind of debriefs with me and he said this one girl, I don't know what color, jenny, it's not her name, jenny was not following the rules after he told her multiple times of the rules. And it was a putting game, putting unit. So they have golf clubs, I mean putters, and you know it can be dangerous if they're not swinging correctly or they're not listening in the wrong directions, they can get in the way and get hit. And she wasn't listening and, by the way, she's a really good girl. She's one of my safety patrol students, she's a very sweet girl, I mean really good girl. But she wasn't following directions and I told him, I said, well, you need to sit her out. I mean, give her the warning, but then after that she's got to sit for two minutes and then she'll see it. I mean she'll see what you're doing, she'll understand. Hopefully she'll correct it and get back in the game.

Speaker 1: 4:53

The problem is, if you don't do it, other kids are going to see that and they're going to think you favor her or the girls or whoever, and the girls or whoever and that's a problem, because it's easy to sit out a kid like, call him Johnny, because Johnny is always in trouble, or in trouble a lot. So it's easy to say Johnny goes on the bench. It's not easy to say Jenny, you need to go sit out because you didn't follow the rules. But you have to be consistent and I know that because I used to do that Like, oh, I don't want to sit out, that nice sweet girl, she's never in trouble. But you know it's, and it's not always a gender thing. I'm just, I'm just giving an example. But you have to be consistent, if not you're going to lose control, lose respect. They're going to the boys, are going to think you're favoring the girls or vice versa, and it's just not a good thing. So you have to be consistent in everything, and that's number one, all right.

Speaker 1: 5:50

Number two is lack of classroom management, and I always think of this as like PE is just not recess. Recess is like Thunderdome, it's like Lord of the Flies, right With dodge balls. Pe should not be recess. There needs to be clear rules, clear class management, clear procedures and the students need to know that this is a class. It's not just like free for all. There are constraints and there are ways we do things. So here's some things that students should know. You know what are the rules, why are they important and what happens if I break a rule.

Speaker 1: 6:31

And procedures are a must. You have to have procedures in place. What signals are you going to use? By the way, these are all things you should review and rehearse, and rehearse and review in the beginning of the school year and, as needed, throughout the year. So what are the signals you use to get their attention? What's the class structure Like? What do we do in the beginning of the class, the end of the class, how do we get ready to go? How do we line up? What are the bathroom procedures, the water procedures? What do we do when we travel from station to station? What if there's a fire drill, lockdown drill? What if there's bad weather? Where do we go? All these things are very important and, again, they need to be the foundation of your program.

Speaker 1: 7:13

Spend time on these and remind your students on a regular basis. Chaos is not an option, and that is number two. Number three is poor time management, and I've seen a lot of different things on this one. So I'm not saying I'm, mr Time, you know, perfect person, but there has to be a purpose to every moment in your class. I'm done with waiting around for classes. I start when there's even one class out of four. I start on time and for the most of my career in PE I've had 40 minute class periods. One year I had 45, but and I know some of you have, you know, like an hour and you're inside, you can work on technology and, you know, log into Chromebooks and do exit tickets. We just don't have that. I'm not saying we can't make some accommodations and some things. We do some things like that. However, I have a breakdown of my class periods and, by the way, I did a podcast on this and had an article on this. If you want to check it out, I'll put all these links in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Here's what I do with my first 10 minutes. In the beginning I do a class warm-up. Usually it's a music mix or some kind of song. We do like a line dance or some kind of thing where we're moving, exercising, all that good stuff. That usually takes like a five minute. That takes the first five minutes. Then I do a brief review of what we've been covering or the units we're doing or some questions we we're going over like an essential question and we give students a chance to respond, maybe turn and talk or some kind of quick Kagan activity. That's 10 minutes right there and sometimes we don't get to that. It might be even quicker than that as far as if we're just short on time, but we always try to do a little questioning or if I have announcements to make. That's the first 10 minutes.

Speaker 1: 9:06

After that, the next 25 minutes are when we break into stations, and usually one coach per class, so we might have to travel a little bit. Maybe two of the coaches and one stays in the pavilion and after the kids are seated we go over the rules of the game. Obviously there's gameplay, there's questioning, kids are seated, we go over the rules of the game. Obviously there's gameplay, there's questioning, we replay the game and we kind of debrief on the game. So that's 25 minutes right there. And, by the way, a lot of times it's in 95-degree heat, so I try to keep kids under the pavilion as much as I can when it's really hot. If it's not, we go out for a little more. And the last five minutes is clean up, go to the bathroom, get drinks. We actually do a reward system where we choose kids to roll these big dice just for team points, things like that, if they did a good job. We try to reward these kids that are either helpers or did a great job, like I said, in the station, or they're just sitting correctly and ready to go. So that's the last five minutes of the day and that's how I structure most of my classes.

Speaker 1: 10:08

But I've seen and heard of schools that they just have to do laps. They just got to do laps, and I'm not against laps and one of the things I did when I first got to my current school is just have a talk with my parents, because what happened is they do a warm-up or we do warm-up, then they bring them to the station, then they have them do a lap and then they do the game and that lap takes forever because you have kids going super fast, you have kids going really slow, everybody wants a drink and you just have to wait for everybody. It takes forever. You're wasting time and there are times for that. If it's one of those games where they barely you know, like a target game, beanbag toss. Okay, I get it, they're going to maybe run a lap because they're not getting a lot of movement. But if we're playing a game where we're already like a tag game or some kind of crossover capture flag, these kinds of games there's no reason to do a lap. I hardly ever send kids for a lap unless it's like a free day, and I'll have them go to a lap so they kind of stagger in and grab the equipment and yeah, that's how I structure my class. But don't waste time, you know. Make every second count. That's what's most important and that is number three. Number four is neglecting the education piece. So we have standards and grade level outcomes. For a reason Now I use kind of a blend of the Florida standards and the national shape standards. Sometimes I don't quite agree with one or the other, but I make them work for my students and I'm not Mr Unpacking the Standards, I'm not that guy, I'm not that go-to guy, but I do cover everything I need to cover make sure my kids have the skills and knowledge needed to move on to middle school.

Speaker 1: 11:52

I've seen way too many PE teachers on social media falling for the latest YouTube clip viral game and they make it just fit into their curriculum somehow, like the next day. So you know, I've seen this a bunch and I use the example. I can think of a couple examples, but I definitely think I'll talk about the second one, I guess in depth, but one of the viral games was the tic-tac-toe with the beanbags. They run back and forth and they play tic-tac-toe as a relay game, and the other one is the rock paper scissors with the hula hoops, where they're hopping. Those two kind of took the PE world by storm a few years ago and what I noticed in both those games is there were two kids running or moving and like 20 kids cheering. That's the first thing I noticed. And there are modifications. Obviously you can add more hoops, you can make more lines, things like that in both games.

Speaker 1: 12:52

But what I've seen online, especially with the hula hoop one, the rock paper scissors, is a lot of comments on social media like, oh, so-and-so, let's play this tomorrow. Oh, we've got to get this going, let's go tomorrow. We're playing this tomorrow. This game is so awesome, we've got to get going. This game's so awesome, we got to get going. And here's my question what were your plans for tomorrow that all of a sudden you're just going to change everything for that.

Speaker 1: 13:19

And how does this fit into your unit? If you're in the middle of a target unit, how are you going to fit in rock paper, scissors, hula hoop, jump or hop or beanbag, tic-tac-toe? Where does it fit into any of these units? I'm not saying you can't play them, but you've got to keep the educational piece. It's not recess, we just talked about that. We're not just doing recess games. We are adding an educational piece to this. There's learning involved, there's questioning and there's standards.

Speaker 1: 13:48

And, by the way, when that Rock Paper Scissors game came out, my principal and even a few parents emailed me like, hey, coach, can we get this game going? And I actually told them no. I said, okay, well, let me look at it for field day if I could add some different lanes to it where the more kids are moving. But I can't just add this right away. So that's important to me. You can't just add a game just on a whim. Are you just winging it? What are you teaching? So make sure you have plans, make sure you follow your plans, make sure you teach the standards and grade level outcomes and make sure you have that education piece. If not, you're just teaching recess and make sure you have that education piece. If not, you're just teaching recess. So number five is not having backup plans.

Speaker 1: 14:37

You need to be on alert at all times. I guess, like I'm the master of improv, I always tell people because I'm a part-time meteorologist. Now again, a lot of you teach inside, so this doesn't affect a lot of you, but if you teach outside, you got to watch the weather all the time. At least I do. There's all of a sudden there's lightning in the area or there's a heat index alert where we have to go inside, or, you know, just rains out of nowhere. Sometimes I mean usually we know, but you know I have to make a call. I have to make a judgment call a lot of times with the weather, where it's like, okay, I see the weather's coming, it's probably going to hit about 10 minutes, should we risk it or should we go inside right now while it's bright and sunny? And I really have to look at the maps and decide like, oh man, I don't know. So I have to make these decisions on a moment's notice, moments notice. So you know, teaching outside does that. Again, teaching inside is not.

Speaker 1: 15:32

You have your own challenges, especially with maybe technology, things like that, not working, being taken over by you know the camera crew when it's you know picture day, or whatever things like that. So for me here's some kind of maybe funny and not so funny ones that happened in the past 14 years of my career of teaching outside. So I talked about the weather already. Another one is you know workers coming in to fix things or just even to mow the lawn, without warning. They're usually on a schedule, but there have been times where they just come in and mow the lawn and they were scheduled to play a game in the field and they just take over the field and start mowing the lawn. And sometimes I can just talk to them like, hey, can you go do this part first and we'll be done a little bit. And they're, you know, they're nice people that just you know they have a job to do as well and we don't know when they're coming.

Speaker 1: 16:17

Sometimes we've had nature lockdowns. We've had a bear sighting. We had to go inside one time. We've had a bobcat sighting and we had to go inside for the day. We've had a bird that would lay eggs in the middle of our field. So we had to like every spring. So we'd have to change our game. Go around the bird and its eggs. One time we had a criminal, or at least somebody on the loose from the law. So we did, you know, lockdown, drill or lockdown, I guess, real thing. So you know, we used to go inside on a moment's notice.

Speaker 1: 16:49

We also had one student oh boy, this drove me crazy. He was in the BI class and he would elope from his classroom and go like running through the woods right by our pavilion and basketball courts. So the principal didn't want us, you know, watching it and you know him to be a distraction, so she'd have us move our classes, like we have to go all of a sudden to the field or the playground just to get out of the way. So these things are, you know, these things happen and you need to be prepared for all this stuff. It's hard, you can't know that something's coming. So some of these things at least. But here's how you should be prepared.

Speaker 1: 17:32

I always have some go-to games written on the back of my clipboard. I mean a lot of these, I know, but just as a reminder, just in case, like back pocket games, I call them. There are some go-to games we have that we practice in the beginning of the school year, in case it's wet on the courts or whatever. It's raining a little bit but there's no lighting in the area and we can be on the pavilion with three to four classes at a time. So we practice these games. I communicate these plans and backup plans to my paras. Hey, in case it rains, we're going inside and we're teaching this. And if you have to go inside by yourself to a separate classroom, here's what you need to teach. Here's the links. I'll send them to you.

Speaker 1: 18:13

Try to think of every possibility. It's not easy, but don't be that person, because they're all looking at you. They're looking at me. Students and parents are looking at you for a decision, and a lot of times I'm wrong when it comes to the weather. We'll go inside and I'm like, oh man, we could have been outside. It didn't rain until afterwards, but I don't know that. I'm trying to make the best decisions I can when I have a chance to do that. So don't be that one that freezes in adversity. Don't be that teacher. Be ready for anything. Have a backup plan.

Speaker 1: 18:41

That's number five, and now it's time for your cowbell tip of the day. All right, everybody. So your tip of the day is to you know, make mistakes. It's okay to make mistakes, but learn from them, always be growing, thinking about these things. And you know, make mistakes. It's okay to make mistakes, but learn from them, always be growing, thinking about these things. And you know, learning, growing, being prepared and just getting better each day. I mean, these are mistakes that anybody can make and I make mistakes every day, but I'm always trying to better myself for my students and myself. So please keep that up and please think about that as you go along and think about these five or, if you have more, if you have other ones to add to this, please let me know these five mistakes that many PE teachers make, because I've made them. So that is your cowbell tip of the day.

Speaker 1: 19:53

Thank you, everybody for tuning in today. I really do appreciate it. As always, go to SuperScienceFizEd for more information or check out my sub stack and my medium articles. If you're more of a reader, you want to check those out, and you'll also be getting one to two emails a week on different posts, different podcasts, all that stuff. So love to have you be a part of it. So click on the links in the show notes and check out the free stuff. There's a free book in there. If you haven't got it yet, a free ebook there's my book that I wrote in there. Lots of good stuff, so definitely check those out. With that, that pe nation, have a great day, week, weekend, whenever you listen to this, and let's keep pushing our profession forward. Thank you.