'cuz working out is hard to do

I just spent a week as: Coach Fehrenbach. That's right, I taught P.E. (K-6th) for a teacher (Mr. E-) who was called for jury duty. Originally he just called for a one day replacement because he was positive that as a teacher he couldn't possibly be selected for jury duty. But one day turned to three, and three into four with a promise to be finished, and four into... in the end SIX days! Thursday night I was called for an additional day to finish up the week. By the end of the day on Friday I was suffering from a very sore throat and a semi-lost voice. My cousin's comment to all this was 'school kids: filthy ecosystems.' I don't know exactly where it all came from, but for sure it could be a mixture of being surrounded by sniffling children with the possibility of my body's weakening resistance to all of Austin's high allergenic moods. What luck! At any rate, on Saturday Mr. E- called again to request me for Monday as well and was convinced that after that the jury would be hung and a retrial would be called. I don't know how many more days he had to spend on this trial because I wasn't able to sub any further than that for him due to some other teaching commitments (which unfortunately eventually fell through in order for me to get over this icky cold that had developed).

What did I teach? In addition to health discussions involving 'Go! Slow! & Woah!' foods that we discussed in their first round of classes, the second time around we had in depth discussions regarding vocab related to Cardiovascular Exercise. One kindergartner boy started to hide his eyes and ears and begged me to stop talking about such gross things like blood vessels and hearts. It was too cute. I ask him if a valentine heart was scary? He said no, so I just told him to think about that every time I said 'heart'. Don't know if I made it tougher for the teacher in the future, but it helped him come out from under his shirt-tails. :)

We also played two Go-Activity games. One was a sports-themed 'freeze' tag where after someone was tagged they had to pretend to do a sport in-place until they were joined by another student in that activity for 5 seconds in order to become un'frozen'. After demonstrating some activities they might do, swimming, soccer, golf, riding your bike, I asked them for some of their favorite things to do and got a wide assortment. Hockey! Darts! Football! Tennis! Cheerleading! Baseball! Cricket! Frisbee! and each time I had the student stand up and show us what they would do 'in-place' to demonstrate that activity. Then during the sports-themed freeze tag I spied children doing the hula (totally adorable, she was good!), the robot (that boy was a crack up!), and even another little girl was caught 'walking the isle with a bouquet in her hand'. I was totally amused.

The other Go-Activity was called: Veins & Arteries. (Veins help blood travel from the body into or toward the heart, while arteries help blood travel away from the heart into the body!). It was another tag-like game where all the students were 'blood cells' and they had to travel safely from the body (the area around the edges of the gym) to the heart (a designated area in the center of the gym) and back again through the veins and arteries (the in-between area) on cue: Veins! (toward the heart) & Arteries! (away from the heart!). The "it" students (holding yarn balls) were designated as 'fat-cells' and had to stay in the area of the veins and arteries and could not enter the safe-areas of the heart & body. To make it increasingly more difficult, as the 'blood cells' were tagged they also became 'fat-cells' (retrieving a yarn ball from the hula hoops in the corners of the room). When it got down to two or three students left as blood cells I would get them all to freeze and gather as a 'cluster of grapes' at my feet to discuss with them how our veins and arteries suffer from the accumulation of fat (from the food we eat) and can eventually cause the flood of blood to stop hence causing strokes and heart attacks. It was pretty convincing. I think most of the kiddos got the gist of it.

Most of the upper grade students (3rd-6th) were supposed to practice for their FitnessGram test that Mr E- was going to give them 'the next time he saw them.' For this I had to get down and give some demonstration of proper push ups and curl ups...to a tape-recorded cadence. And to be honest by the end of a full day of such exercise I was indeed in pain, not to mention after a whole week+one! I'm such a WIMP!

Despite the icky cold, a few good things has come of this week+one day long job at this particular elementary school. For one, I got a chance to get to work with every single class of the entire school twice. So not only were the kids becoming more familiar to me and I with them, but their teachers were coming to know me as well. By the end of my time there different teachers were asking if I only subbed P.E., of course I told them I do it all... so there was a lot of connections made that week and my name, phone number, and sub ID# was posted in the teacher's lounge. I've already got something set up for end of this month and the school called me this week in the morning to see if I could come in (of course I've been sick, so I had to decline). The other good thing, even though I've totally been paying for it, the chance to exercise again has strengthened my poor excuse for arm muscles. :P