PE teachers use tech to track student performance
Brad Alper and Kevin Conway are physical education teachers at South Middle School in Arlington Heights.
Alper, who received his teaching degree at Northeastern Illinois University, has been there for 12 years. Besides teaching PE, he coaches girls and boys volleyball and supervises the seventh-grade outdoor education experience at Lorado Taft.
Conway, in his third year at South, earned his teaching degree at Elmhurst College. He coaches girls basketball and girls/boys volleyball, and also is a supervisor at the seventh-grade outdoor education experience.
Q: What led you to becoming a physical education teacher?
Alper: I loved my experiences when I was a volunteer coach and when I worked in New Orleans as the youth programs assistant for the Saints. Those opportunities led me to working with and helping kids appreciate activity and exercise.
Conway: During college I really wasn't sure what it was I wanted to major in, until I took a park district class. I was able to experience, firsthand, how it felt to work with kids, and I fell in love with that experience. Seeing kids achieve their goals and being a part of that experience is extremely rewarding.
Q: How has the physical education curriculum changed over the years, and in what ways do you embrace and enact those changes in your classes?
Alper: I was hired at (South Middle School), which was an already progressive program that wanted to make changes for the better. Physical Education used to look like this: students come to class and the teacher takes attendance (uniforms, shoes, lined up properly), creating a lot of downtime. Now our kids are active the second they exit the locker room, and our dynamic program is based on being energetic as much as possible. The students know our routine and are ready to be active daily and for the majority of the period.
Q: Besides taking part in physical activity, in what ways do your students learn about the importance of being healthy and staying fit?
Alper and Conway: The students learn a lot about diet, nutrition and exercise in health class and how lifestyle factors and risk-taking impacts having a long and healthy life.
We know that, and like to play off of what they learn in health class by teaching them fitness routines and a multitude of different exercises on our fitness day and in our fitness room.
Q: Tell us about the heart-monitoring project taking place in your classes.
Alper and Conway: Nick Filipowski, (Arlington Heights Elementary) District 25's Fine Arts & Physical Education coordinator, was vital in us being able to get the Polar Heart rate monitor project off the ground. We were able to get two class sets, and with these monitors we can now assess a student's activity level on a daily basis.
The monitors tell us precisely how much effort the students are putting into the activity assigned. We ask them to be in the green/yellow heart rate for 10 minutes each fitness day. This takes away the subjectivity aspect of grading effort that a P.E. teacher normally struggles with.
These heart rate monitors also give the students instant feedback about their "effort." We often see the students wearing the Polar Bands continually check and self-assess their heart rate data. Students will then increase their activity level as needed.
Again, this helps us to be as objective as possible when assessing students. We look forward to continuing to build on the Polar Band project in the future.