Outside PE Checklist

What's up friends!

Let's talk outside PE! Teaching PE outside presents unique challenges from weather monitoring to wildlife encounters, requiring specific strategies and equipment to ensure effective instruction. Here are some things to consider:

• Weather conditions
• Unforeseen events
• The physical toll on teachers
• Specialized supplies
• Multiple backup plans ready at a moment's notice
• Proper gear
• Transitions and procedures

Grab my copy of the Outside PE Checklist as a reference that includes equipment, procedures, transitions, and other essentials for successful outdoor teaching. Let's keep pushing our profession forward!

Take care and happy teaching,

Dave

-Check out supersizedphysed.com for more resources, including free PDFs, articles, and courses to help with your PE program. Please leave a review to help grow this podcast and keep pushing our profession forward.

-Article on Outside PE Checklist

-Team Building Games Ebook (with preview): https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Team-Building-Games-and-Activities-for-PE-Class-14063095

-Free resources include Substack and Medium articles with PE tips, games, and strategies

-High Fives and Empowering Lives  book available as an ebook or paperback

-Paperback or download: HERE

-Amazon Ebook: HERE

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Outside PE Teaching
• 3:08 Weather Challenges in Outdoor Education
• 6:22 Handling Unforeseen Events and Disruptions
• 9:26 Physical Impact on PE Teachers
• 11:04 Essential Outside Teaching Supplies
• 13:41 Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Supersize FizZed podcast. My name is Dave and today let's talk teaching outside. Let's talk about my outside PE checklist that I want to share with you today so you can be effective and productive and hopefully have fun when you're outside PE teaching. So, without further ado, here we go. Thank you everybody for tuning in today. I really do appreciate it. So let's talk teaching outside.

Speaker 1: 1:00

It's different If you teach inside and you have one class at a time or more. It's just it's a different thing teaching outside, and so I know I'm teaching to, you know, not everybody out here or out there, but you know teaching outside is all I've ever known. So hopefully I can share with you some tips whether you teach inside or outside. But this is more about an outside thing. You know, when I first walked into my former school this is my second school I'm at now as far as PE I walked into it and I was 10 years into the classroom teaching and I wasn't ready for the shock of 150 or more sometimes students and three paras just looking at me for not only guidance but like hey, what's going on here? I wasn't ready to teach outside. It's Florida, it's hot. Not only guidance, but like hey, what's going on here? I wasn't ready to teach outside, I was it's. You know I it's it's Florida, it's hot and I grew up in Buffalo, I grew up in snow, so you know I wasn't ready to teach outside all day long, every day. You know, I grew up in the North, I mean, everybody had a gym and class sizes were small. I come to, I come here and it's like, oh my goodness, just like just a shock to the system. And you know, now I've been teaching for 15 years PE and you know I had 10 at my former school, about I left a little early and this is my fifth year of my current school. So 15, give or take. My class sizes have ranged from 80 to about 150. It just depends on the year, depends on the school, everything. And I enjoy it, I do. I enjoy it, I love it. But there are a lot of challenges and obstacles, you know, when you teach outside versus having an inside gymnasium. And I created an outside PE checklist. Check it out in the show notes. I created an outside PE checklist check it out in the show notes to help prepare for a lot of these things as much as you can. I can't honestly tell you that I've seen everything, done everything and can prepare you for everything outside, but I can tell you some of the things that have helped me along the way and have happened to me along the way.

Speaker 1: 3:05

Let's dive in, let's go. Here's number one, all right. Number one is the weather. So yeah, again, I grew up up north in Buffalo, where it's known for its snow, and I live in Florida now and I've lived here for a while, and there's a lot of differences in the weather. Buffalo has snow, I mean a lot of snow. Florida has the rain, the heat, the lightning, the hurricanes, and they're challenging in different ways. I think I still take blizzards over hurricanes any day, because blizzards will keep you in your house for a few days, but hurricanes could destroy your house. So I've been lucky as far as that goes, but a lot of people have not.

Speaker 1: 3:44

That being said, the weather plays a large part in teaching outside. No matter where you live, teaching outside brings the weather into play. If you're outside, right, I feel like I'm a part-time meteorologist. I really do. I'm always watching the weather, always trying to figure out oh, is it going to rain, is the lightning heading our way, or maybe it won't. And I have to watch the heat index in the beginning of the year and the end of the year, because they just implemented this, I think two years ago, where if it's over 104 degrees or if it's 104 and over, you have to be inside. So these are all things I have to watch with the weather and, you know, sometimes I have to decide a moment's notice, and that's something that I think teaching inside you don't have to worry about is like you just teach inside. I mean, things happen, I get it, but you know, sometimes you know again, my parents are looking at me, teachers are looking at me and be like are we going to be inside? Are we outside Because I have to look at the map, the weather map, and be like I don't know, can we make it? But it's not fun.

Speaker 1: 4:39

You know, when we start some, there's been a lot of times where we'll start outside and then all of a sudden the lightning will be close and we have to go inside, or it'll just start sprinkling but then get a little heavier and like, okay, let's just, we can go under the pavilion, but then when it gets really tough, we have to go inside. And something happened a couple of weeks ago that I've never dealt with in 15 years almost. So we start our last class. It was third grade. Under the pavilion it was sprinkling, so we played rollout, which is one of our go-to games, but then it just started pouring.

Speaker 1: 5:11

We were undercover, so we were okay, but then the thunder and lightning were within one mile and the students got scared. I mean, it was a little scary, I'm not going to lie. The thunder was pretty loud but we couldn't get back to the classrooms because there's no covered walkway. I mean, we have a pavilion and then again there's no. There's there's sidewalk but it's not covered. And we had half the group We've never done this before Half the group go inside our office and it's it's our office and storage area. The other half stayed outside with me against the wall, like just against the wall, not even close to the like, the outside part. And I had called on the radio our administration. I said I don't have to do here, I can't get the kids to safety. So they, our administration team, had to come out and they took kids, three at a time under their umbrellas to safety, even though, I mean, lightning was still semi-close. But they did as fast as they could, and it was tough. That's never happened before.

Speaker 1: 6:13

But you have to plan for the unexpected weather conditions that might occur at any time and that's not easy. But that's something we always have to deal with and you need to think about. So that's number one. Number two is unforeseen events, and I've seen a lot of crazy things at pe. I've seen a lot of things that have changed our plans like in a moment's notice. They just would just have to do something different.

Speaker 1: 6:38

So the first thing is the district sometimes sends workers out to. Well, they cut the grass, but sometimes they don't tell us when they're coming and we're ready to play out there. So we have to move. Um, sometimes they come in and work on something, like this year, like all of a sudden they're like oh, we were working on this, these fans, we had to move what we were doing. They or they put in mulch or they do. It's just something where they have to move. We have to move because they have a job to do. So you know there's sometimes they just don't tell us they're coming. So, um, that's number one.

Speaker 1: 7:13

Number two is there was once uh, actually twice in one of each school, uh, a bear sighting, so we had to go inside for the day. Um, and a couple of years ago there was a bobcat sighting, so we had to go inside again. Now there's woods right near us and they never caught these, you know, the bear or the bobcat. So we went inside, but you know they're still out there, right. And then the fourth one is there was a student that would elope from class. He'd just leave, he was in the behavior class and he'd go into our woods near the pavilion. So administration, you know, they didn't want all the kids I had at the time to see what was going on, so they would have us move to like the playground or way out in the field. So we just have to move what we're doing or change what we're doing on a moment's notice. And I don't know why he kept going in there. Man, there's spiders, snakes, poison, ivy. I never go on that thing. All right.

Speaker 1: 8:07

The fifth one of this is there was a felon on the loose in the area, so we had to go into lockdown right away. Now, fortunately that was near dismissal time I think all the kids were gone, as far as the PE kids were gone, students, but then we had to go into the building and stay for an extra like hour. I was actually caught in a room, trapped in a room with all the bus drivers. I think they're very nice people, but it's just a little different, like they have their own, they're just kind of chit-chatting. I'm just sitting there like well, I don't know but, and that didn't change really our PE situation, but it changed dismissal. It changed a lot of things. So just a little thing there and testing Sometimes, especially at my former school, because the pavilion is real close to the classrooms and we play music a lot.

Speaker 1: 9:07

So we'd have to go way out in the field backup plan and you have to account for these, Make sure you have games kind of in your quote-unquote back pocket just in case and just make sure you're ready for anything. And that is number two. The third thing to account for is the impact on your body, and maybe just me. I mean, I'm getting older. I mean aren't we all I know? But teaching outside is difficult. I'm not sure it's easy in the gym, I'm not saying it is, but if you want to walk the walk and talk the talk, you got to be prepared for a lot of wear and tear on your body. And here's some of the reasons. Okay, first is I teach on cement, which requires good sneakers, and yeah, you got to spend a little extra money on these sneakers. It's a lot of impact on your feet and your knees.

Speaker 1: 9:51

Jumping around with the kids, I've had more cortisone shots all over my body than flu shots. I mean, I've had cortisone shots in my heel both heels actually a few times. I had surgery on my one heel. I've had, let's see, a cortisone shot of my knee and my elbows a bunch of times. I actually had surgery on one of my elbows. I had had cortisone shots of my shoulders. Um, I just I mean, I know that's not all lower body, but I've had a lot of cortisone shots in my life. I think my body's made up of half cortisone. Um, it's just a lot of impact and you got to be prepared for that.

Speaker 1: 10:30

Now, of course, the second one is the heat. Or talk about the weather, but the heat in Florida is no joke. I know that's not everywhere, but I sweat a lot and it takes a lot out of me physically. So a lot of Gatorade and water, that's how to survive out here. And the third one it kind of goes along with that is, we have to take a lot of water breaks and keep students out of the heat, in the beginning and ending of the school year especially. It just saps your energy and it's hard. It's hard on your body. So I wear dry fit shirts, good shoes, a hat, sunglasses. Definitely do that if you teach in the heat and don't forget your sunscreen. All right, the final thing to think about is your outside supplies, because outside teaching is just a different animal and I'm not talking about just, oh, hula hoops and jump ropes. I'm talking about just things that only an outside teacher would need pretty much. So here's some things to consider Having different types of spray Wasp spray See, wasp is a hard word to say.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Wasp spray, yeah. Ant spray I mean really there's times when kids are sitting on their dots in the pavilion and they're like, oh, there's a wasp. I'm like that just doesn't happen inside. Right, ants, like I said, yeah, kids to sit on On the track, we would put duct tape down like little pieces where they'd sit. Now I did paint during the summer, so we don't need those anymore. But you know, it's just something to think about. Lots of Band-Aids, that's probably I'm sure that's inside as well. Portable water coolers for the field. We bring water coolers out way out in the field if the kids need some water, obviously. So it's just it's on a cart and we just kind of bring them out there.

Speaker 1: 12:12

Walkie talkies and radios Everybody has one. Last year our school was going through a, I guess, a radio transition problem where the old radios were dying and they were. The new ones were on order and they're very expensive, and we had trouble communicating. We only had one working radio at PE, and I have, you know, myself, and two paras, so we had trouble communicating. We had only one working radio at PE, and I have you know myself and two paras, so we had to decide who's going to get it, you know, and it was hard. Sometimes we had an injury and we had a hard time communicating with each other to get that person help from the clinic.

Speaker 1: 12:46

So the next thing is a weather app on your phone. Like I'm always checking the weather, I use a lightning bug or weather bug, weather bug, yeah, weather bug. A portable sound system. You don't have to have it for the field, but I just have my sound system. I use it on the pavilion anyway because it's easier and it's kind of better Heavy tape or sticky tech for keeping posters from flying away. I mean, like I have a hard time keeping posters and things I make because they just blow away in the wind. And you know you don't have a lot of technology so you have to make do with what's available to you.

Speaker 1: 13:19

So look around your outside space and assess the situation and my final thought would be, or thoughts would be you know, teaching outside is a lot different than teaching indoors and you know I'm sure I'd love to teach inside with one class at a time, air conditioning, and I'm not trying to say it's easy. You know you've got more technology and I'm sure you know the teachers that teach inside have a lot of different problems that I don't know anything about. So I'm not minimizing anything, I'm just saying teaching outside is all I know and it's different. It's a lot of different. You know unpredictable things that can just happen. So you know it's just different and I enjoy it. I enjoy my PE space, my school, my students, and that's all that really matters. So you know, hopefully you do as well.

Speaker 1: 14:08

And I'm not going to do a couple of tips of the day, but I'll just say grab my copy of the outside PE checklist and that just for reference. That could help, as it has other things on there, like just different things to think about with procedures and transitions and things like that. So definitely grab a copy. It's got equipment, all that stuff. So have a great day, week, weekend, pe nation. You guys and girls are awesome and let's keep pushing our profession forward. Thank you.