Cortland Physical Education Mini Conference

The key note speaker, Dr. John R. Passarini really helped open my eyes and see why I am here at SUNY Cortland as a Physical Education major. He was somebody that has taught at all levels, ages and abilities. But what really made me think was when he said "people are not disabled, they are differently abled." I've always known that you can't look at somebody and consider them handicapped or physically underdeveloped. Seeing somebody as just different abled puts them on the same playing field as the rest of their peers. Dr. Passarini really made it clear to me that although they are differenlty abled they can participate in the same activities as the rest of the students. Adaptations should be made but the activity still needs to challenge the student. Seeing the video of Katie Lynch proved everything that Dr. Passarini was saying. She had different abilities but continued to challenge herself on a daily basis. Katie is a person that you can look at and realize that you should stop complaining about doing tasks that you find hard or too difficult. She had several set backs but was determined to reach each and every goal whether is was graduating high school and college or walking the beginning of a marathon. Like Dr. Passarini said, "Katie was a candle lighter."

My First Experience

My first experience was put on me and my partner without any warning. We were given several minutes to wing something together that was considered a basic skill. We both agreed on the most basic skill that all people of all shapes and sizes can take part in, "catching". Although catching seems so easy that you can just do it with little instruction, we ran into several ideas to break "catching" down into its most basic phases or progressions. When the lesson began the projection of my voice was below average at best. The beginning of the lesson was much too slow and the students did not get a chance to buy into the excitement. They thought "this is gonna be boring." To demonstrate proper form of catching we should have had all the students sit down for 20 seconds while they watched and then went and got their ball to play "catch" with. The actual drill of learning how to "catch" and its progressions should not have had everybody lined up military style playing "catch." We should of instructed the students to find their own space in the gymnasium because we had the whole gymnasium to work with. We cramped everybody into a small area that restricted their movements. Also with increasing the area and letting them spread out takes away from the concentration on them as an individual. The only person able to concentrate on them would be the teachers and their partner. if we had more equipment we could have started the lesson with throwing a scarf up to yourself and the most basic progression and then moving on from there.