PE

Before going to class…
I have a confession to make: I am not really a sporty person. I used to be, but during the years, I became pretty lazy. Therefore, I wasn’t really looking forward to the PE lessons, especially because they were in the early morning, when I could just sleep in.
But no, real Belgian as I am, I stood up, drank some coffee and put on my most negative face at the beginning of the lesson.
After five minutes of persistent stubbornness, I started to enjoy the lessons. They reminded me why I used to love sports. The fun games, adrenaline flowing through your body. I love it!

During class…
I loved the way Jakob taught us. I can use some of the games we played in my teaching job next year. It was really useful and, I hate to admit it, I enjoyed it very much! It was fun that the lessons were taught at a child’s level, not the level of an adult. I especially loved the lesson where each country had to present a game from their home country.
During the last lesson, we worked with a lot of materials. Everything was available for us. It was up to us to create a trail with these materials. Everyone then had to do the different exercises that our colleagues had made for us. After that, there was room for a little bit of theory; the didactics of PE in Denmark. It’s strange how this can be so universal.

What can we learn from this?
I learned, from my own experience with the lessons, that you can use PE and movement to get to know a child better, to get them to relax around you. As a teacher, you always want to talk to a child, to know what he or she is all about. I think that, if you just observe them during a PE lesson, you can get more information from them. If you give them space to let go and just enjoy themselves, you will get a better view of who they are and how they interact with each other. That is just as important as their academical skills.