Overview

Currently, my first-grade students at Emerson School receive music instruction from our on-site music teacher for one hour each week. She bases her lessons on the Michigan K-12 Physical Education Standards.

Before joining Emerson, I taught for six years in California, where we used the Physical Education Model Content Standards for California Public Schools. From 2012 to 2015, while teaching at Stevenson PACT Elementary School, our students received 45 minutes of P.E. instruction per week, in partnership with teachers from the YMCA of Silicon Valley and Playworks.

From 2017 to 2019, while teaching at Cascade Canyon School, I worked with our on-site P.E. teacher who taught my students 1.5 hours per week throughout the entire school year.

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Yoga

During the 2014-2015 school year, a classroom parent who is a yoga instructor taught a weekly yoga and mindfulness class for students. She believed that physical fitness boosts self-confidence and self-esteem, and she emphasized good habits for both body and mind, as well as goal-setting.

The sessions typically began with age-appropriate warm-up exercises like jogging in place, jumping jacks, high knees, cross jacks, mummy kicks, and plank jacks. To keep students engaged, she often turned these exercises into a game called "challenge poses," where students worked to improve their ability to perform a specific pose, such as the "diamond jump" (jumping as high as possible while touching the soles of the feet together and clapping hands above the head).

After the strength-building exercises, she guided students through traditional yoga poses to help them cool down. She also taught breathing techniques to promote relaxation. If time allowed, she led cooperative games like freeze tag, chaos tag, red light green light, Marco Polo, ball tag, the blob, and flag tag.
Students reported that practicing yoga made them feel "calm and nice."