About a month ago, the second podcast episode I was featured on was released on the Hillsdale College Classical Education Podcast (my first episode is here: Bringing Back Physical Education). The first week of Christmas Break, I got an email from a junior high P.E. teacher in California who had heard the podcast and wanted to talk about it. A few days after Christmas, we spent well over an hour discussing best practices in physical education, and classical education. Recording a podcast episode is one thing, but knowing that someone listened to it, identified with it, and acted on it is a different thing entirely! Connecting two people in different states who both take P.E. too seriously might not seem like a significant achievement, but I’m taking it as an encouraging sign for the “Just P.E.” movement.
This is the link to the episode on Spotify: Nathan McClallen: Successful P.E.
Nathan McClallen, Athletic Director and Lead P.E. Teacher at Founders Classical Academy of Leander (TX) joins host Scot Bertram to discuss what a successful P.E. class looks like, how to put students in positions to succeed, and different ways to reach goals as a P.E. teacher.
Below is the transcript from the 22-minute episode, which was not as easy to produce as I thought it would be (3,800 words), but it was a fun exercise nonetheless.
Scot Bertram, Host:
We’re joined today by Nathan McClallen, he is an Athletic Director and Lead P.E. Teacher at Founders Classical Academy of Leander in Texas. Nathan, thanks for joining us!
Nathan McClallen, Subject:
Happy to be here.
Scot:
Tell us a little bit about what you do as Athletic Director and Lead P.E. Teacher.
Nathan:
It’s a small school, so I end up doing a lot of things and, you know, for some athletic directors it depends if you inherit a program or start from scratch. In my case, we started the school from scratch so I’ve been involved in everything from the beginning, whether it’s figuring out what sports we’re going to have, or what leagues are going to be in, scheduling games, ordering equipment, designing uniforms, hiring coaches, coaching coaches, all of that stuff is part of being athletic director. Then, in terms of being a lead P.E. teacher, I also have taught P.E. that whole stretch, the last six years at Founders Leander, and so that’s more just kind of being in touch with the other P.E. teachers and having conversations with them again regularly about what we’re doing, what we want to do, how we’re doing it—that sort of thing.
Scot:
We’re talking today about measuring success P.E. class—what does it mean to you to have a successful P.E. class?
Nathan:
So, I think with anything you start doing at a school or in education you want to start big picture—what are we trying to achieve, long run, with the students? So that’s where I start. I consider a successful P.E. class to be better equipping students to live a good life. For me that means a couple different things.. that could mean that they come out of class with more knowledge: knowledge about skills, knowledge about health, knowledge about fitness. They learn how to push their own limits, mentally and physically. They learn how to work together, to cooperate, that sort of thing. So this can be given to them by the teacher directly, but primarily it comes from first-hand experience—doing the activities, playing the games, being a part of a team. We also look for students to develop more confidence in themselves and their ability to succeed, so that’s a result of hard work, it’s a result of improvement. Now they get to see improvement, chart improvement. We show it to them and they also notice it themselves, and they also hopefully throughout the year have had significant personal achievements or team achievements. So that’s all kind of the long run successful class big picture, but then there’s all kinds of other benefits day-to-day for students whether it’s getting in better shape than when they started, I think that’s a goal, definitely, and then there’s little things like it’s just fun to play games, right? It’s like a break from sitting in a chair, writing, taking notes, so it can improve the rest of the day by having a good day in P.E. class, so it’s kind of all of those things.
Scot:
What’s a typical schedule for PE class—is it every day, or how many days a week?
Nathan:
At our school it is five days a week, yeah, our school is K-12 and the grammar school classes are a little bit shorter—35 minutes, 40 minutes—but they don’t change out until 6th grade. Starting in 6th grade the classes are 50 minutes but we can have 5 minutes bookended on each end so it ends up being closer to 40.
Scot:
Why is it important to measure success in a P.E. class?
Nathan:
Well, I think just generally in life you have to measure things in order to know if you’re doing a good job or not. I think P.E. is one of the more difficult classes to measure things because on some level you have to say there’s a line between acceptable effort and unacceptable, right? And everything in P.E. just starts with effort. And so, if you’re asking yourself that, as a teacher, that’s gonna be going to vary from student to student—you can’t grade on natural ability, right? You can’t say “Well, you’re gifted and so you’re getting an ‘A’”, or “you’re not gifted so you’re not passing”, right, and if you imagine—again, I like to make analogies and think about that [P.E.] in the classroom—in that case, it would be the equivalent of saying “Well, you have a high IQ so you get a A”. You have to avoid that, but in P.E. you can’t make a test that everyone has to hit a certain number on. You can’t say “Everyone has to run a mile this time or you fail”, right, which is how all other classes work, right, they have tests and there are pass rates and fail rates and A’s and B’s and that sort of thing, so, it’s really difficult to measure and I think that’s a big reason why it has not been paid much attention to. Because P.E. teachers have, kind of, well—the students know that it’s difficult to measure, right, and then P.E. teachers know that it’s difficult to measure, and their admin knows it’s difficult to measure, so it’s kind of stopped being measured. Or, if you do have things that are measured it’s like universal fitness tests, that, when you administer that test in class the students can’t—it’s totally based on self-motivation, right? It’s totally based on the student wanting to do well, but the teacher can’t say “Keep running until you hit this number” right, they have to say “Keep running until you feel like stopping”. In a normal P.E. class, you have a significant percentage of students who make a joke out of it, who get a zero or a one and just think it’s funny that they can then go sit on the bench with their friends while other people are actually giving effort. When you have such a significant percentage of kids doing that, it kind of makes the whole test—the averages and all the statistics—pointless. There hasn’t been a solution to this on a large level across P.E., so that is something that I have had to try to figure out and address at our P.E. classes at a smaller level. So, the question was “Why is it important to measure success?” and I kind of answered, you know, “It’s really hard,” and that’s why I think it’s important. It’s important because it is so difficult.
Scot:
Do you think that those challenges, or difficulties, affects how P.E. is perceived in the realm of school?
Nathan:
Absolutely, yeah I mean, I think.. you really only hear, I mean, this is true maybe in most areas, but you know everyone, if their job is being stereotyped, they’re a little more sensitive to it. So I feel that as a P.E. teacher, that the only time it’s ever brought up in conversation is to make fun of P.E. or make fun of P.E. teachers—you know the stereotype. If you were just to ask any random person, “Okay, picture a P.E. class”, or “Picture a P.E. teacher,” you know you’re probably going to get some anecdote about being bullied in dodgeball, or an overweight P.E. teacher or, you know, those are the stereotypes. so I think it has definitely affected the perception, and, what I talk about, when, again, I make analogies to the classroom, right, and if you pick any class—you pick literature and you say “All right, imagine that literature has been approached the same way that P.E. has been approached for the last however many decades”, right, so the analogy would go something like: “Once a week in literature you have to read 16 page of the dictionary—any 16 pages, any pace, maybe the teacher is yelling at you to read faster—sometimes other days, you know, the teacher walks into class and just throws a stack of paper at you and says, you know, ‘Do whatever you want’—that’s the equivalent of rolling out the ball stereotype in P.E.—just do whatever you want, but there’s no order, there’s no direction, no intention.” Then my favorite thing is saying, like, you have a contest in English and it’s a spelling bee, right, and you pick the best spellers and you tell the best spellers to pick their own teams, right, and so you’re openly encouraging this sort of unhealthy dynamic. If you’re a P.E. teacher and you just say “All right, these two kids are the best athletes or the best dodgeball players, so I’m gonna let you say whatever you want, do whatever you want, while you judge your classmates”, like, that’s just a bad scenario, obviously, but that’s what’s been happening in P.E.—or at least that’s what gets talked about and that’s what gets focused on. So, I think that all, so, if you’re imagining those sorts of things in a literature teacher who isn’t good at writing, clearly doesn’t currently write, maybe wrote in high school, and is always telling stories about how they used to write high school, you know, that’s all things that P.E. teachers have to deal with, and any subject that is treated that way will become a punchline, it will become a joke. So that’s kind of what we’re fighting against when we try to take P.E. seriously.
Scot:
We’re talking with Nathan McClallen, he is the Athletic Director and Lead P.E. Teacher at Founders Classical Academy Leander in Texas. So, how can you practically measure success for a student in P.E.? What have you been working on?
Nathan:
Measuring success is tough, but we do have ways to do it. I think so much of it comes down to knowing your students and caring about them, obviously, but basically what I tell my students is “First thing, first standard I have for you is I want you to prove to me that your brain is in control of your body”. If you’re, if you, if I can tell you’re not doing something just because you don’t feel like it, or you’re not pushing yourself because it’s hard, then you’re in a certain category, right, but if you’ve proven to me that you can tell your body what to do and when, and push through things that are difficult, then you go into a different category. So that’s the first thing. I don’t.. Let’s say we’re running a mile—you know, we don’t just run the mile in P.E. but I think it’s a good example when you’re talking about these sorts of things—so if you’re running the mile and you’re clearly afraid of it, yeah, I’m going to try to motivate you, I’m going to try to push you, and let’s say we run—we have a distance day every week but it’s not always the mile—but let’s say you’re running a mile once or twice a month in that case, right, I’m going to care about the times that you get. I’m going to try to make you care, encourage you to care about the times that you get, and if you don’t give adequate effort, that’s how I grade you. Whereas, you take someone else who is in P.E., and on the cross country team, right—and again this comes down to knowing your students—do you know they’re on the cross country team? Do you know that they’re running, you know, 5 miles in the morning and another 3 miles in the afternoon at practice? In that case, no, I’m not going to, I’m not going to tell that student that I expect them to collapse at the finish line when they run a mile because that’s not what’s best for them—they’ve proven their mental, their capacity in that physical effort, there, so it’s tough, it’s a case-by-case basis in P.E. So, the first thing that I’m looking for is a high level of effort. I’m looking for them to be competitive if we’re playing a team sport. I’m looking for a certain level of commitment to the class. So what we do in our PE classes is we have, we give students points every day that they can only lose. In a normal week they have 15 points per week and, and if you lose points it hurts your grade, it affects your grade pretty quickly. But over the long run, over the course of the semester, you can easily recover a few lost points here and there, recover from a a few lost points because it averages out. Let’s say they don’t change out one day? Automatic lost point. You can call it “Cooperation”, you know, you can call “Respect”, it’s whatever fits that category that day. Similarly, if someone is injured, or they feel sick, or something like that, our approach is “Yes, you can sit out, or you can go to the nurse”, so you can go get that note from her. If you don’t have a note from the nurse, then I’m going to say, I’m going to make a note on my spreadsheet that day that says, like, “Injured but needs to be verified”, right, so what I’m asking them to do then is bring me a note from your parents the next day. If they forget that, then they lost a point. So, I have to have that verification, right, you can’t—this is, this is one of the most difficult things about being a P.E. teacher—you have to know the students so well to know a little bit of pushback, right, “Okay, you say you’re too sick to run a mile? All right, well what’s wrong with you?” And so you have to have kind of this healthy skepticism, that you know you’re trying to do what’s best for them, you’re trying to get them to experience the success, this kind of control, this mind-body relationship, that, like I said, is what we’re looking for, but you don’t, you cannot force someone to run the mile who is actually injured, right? Like a broken ankle, you can’t say “Well, just power through it, rub some dirt on it or whatever.” So that is such a delicate student-by-student, case-by-case, you know, aspect of the job that you go through every single day. Now there’s all sorts of things that you can try to do as a P.E. teacher, whether it’s “Yeah, you can sit out but you have to write a paper while you sit out”, right, and so make it a little less appealing, or “Yeah, you can sit out, but you can’t sit and talk with your friends, or you can’t do homework”, or “You can’t”—you know, so there’s all these different approaches that we kind of have arrived at and I think we do a pretty good job, but, ultimately, like I said, measuring success: we want our kids to want to compete, to want to be active, to want all of those things. To not be afraid of physical exertion.
Scot:
How do you help to put your students in positions to succeed, and perhaps also get them to want to give the effort, outside of the, outside of the points or the grade being a, a potential thing to take away from them? How do you encourage that?
Nathan:
I think just getting the feedback loop started of experiencing success. If you’re trying to figure out what makes people successful, what gives people confidence, I think so much of that is experiencing it as a result of hard work, and P.E. is the best class that we have to, to see that relationship between hard work and success. “I am getting in better shape because I did this”, right, it’s very clear. That can be more difficult in a regular classroom class—maybe you put effort into taking notes or put effort in studying, but then the test, you know, asked questions you weren’t prepared for and so that can be frustrating, it can actually set you back, right, so P.E. has this direct relationship between hard work and success. And so, if they’re looking at these things throughout the year and they see, “I’m getting better”, that can create this feedback loop that then gives them more confidence in their abilities, or changes how they view themselves. They don’t know, maybe they know they have limitations, but they realize, too, that those can change. So, the other thing that I think, in terms of setting people up for success, or setting P.E. students up for success, is in terms of who they compare themselves to. This is a huge problem in P.E. and, you know, they look at somebody who has been playing a sport their whole life and say “Well, I can’t even try. I’ll never be good at that”. They compare, we compare ourselves—our instincts in that area… like, we have to compare in order to draw conclusions, or in order to understand the world around us, but we kind of fixate on the wrong thing so much of the time, and I think in P.E. it’s a much more, it’s a very natural setting to teach people, teach students “Here’s a good thing to compare yourself to”, “Here’s how you should think about this.” And so, I think if they can come away at the end of the class thinking, you know, understanding, you should be comparing yourself to yourself, yesterday, right? That’s your best competition. If they start doing that, I think you can really, I really see students get addicted to that process of bettering yourself day by day, and that’s, that’s how I think of it—setting our students up to succeed.
Scot:
We talked a bit about this earlier—approaching students differently, those who, maybe have been running cross country for years, or who have been playing baseball for a long time, and those students who perhaps consider themselves to be incapable of doing what you’re asking. They think they’re unathletic, they can’t do this—how do you approach those students, differently, in the classroom?
Nathan:
Those, that group of students is easily my favorite group, category to work with. There’s a certain percentage of students who are going to love P.E. no matter what they do, and not really think about it, because maybe they’re naturals, or they just have fun every day, right, so it’s hard to produce an environment where they don’t have fun. And there’s kind of a middle group that could go either way based on the culture, or based on the activity, maybe they like some and not others, but there’s always going to be—now this is in a mandatory, regular P.E. class—there is always going to be a certain segment who comes into the class thinking “I am not an athlete. I am not going to enjoy this. No one can do anything that’s gonna make me enjoy this.” And their mindset is “I’m gonna do the minimum every day at all times the entire year”. So that’s a fun challenge, for me, but it’s also the most rewarding group to work with when you see them change, when you see their mindset shift. So, I think the thing that I talk about the most, probably, in those sorts of classes—I teach a couple different types of classes; we have an elective as well—but I just tell those students, I tell everybody, you know, “If you have a body, you are an athlete”. The human experience is physical—we live in the world, we’re not just a brain or a mind. Instead of thinking of themselves in this kind of false dichotomy, you know, athletes and non-athletes—everyone is an athlete. So you have to understand that, you have to understand that it’s a spectrum that you can move along through hard work and through effort. You can get better at anything you want to, and, in fact, it’s really a fun place to be if you’re new to something. If you’re new to running a mile, right, you’re gonna be really bad at it at first, right? But if you work at it, you’re going to see incredible improvement with very little effort, right, that that learning curve when you go from “I’ve never done this before” to “I’m putting some amount of effort towards this” is so rewarding, it’s so addicting and it’s so fun to see them realize that. Because as anyone goes through the learning curve—anyone who has tried to pick up something new and stuck with it understands what I’m talking about, because there is, there’s a point where it’s really hard and you have to figure out “Okay, how do I feel about being bad at this?”, but once you do say “Okay, I’m gonna push through this first plateau”, you see incredible gains and that first, kind of, ascent before you hit the next plateau is so fun, right, and then you hit another plateau and then you have to think about “Okay, well, how am I, am I willing to put the work in to go to the next one?”, right, and that’s where each time you level up, the gains are harder to achieve and they’re smaller right, so, by the time you’re an elite athlete, it’s your life, and you’re looking at a minimal improvement, So, the most fun place to be, I think, is someone who has never done something before and they are just committing to it. Seeing students realize that, seeing them—we have exercises that we do regularly where they chart their progress—and seeing them take ownership and understand that just because someone else that they know is good at something, does not mean that they were born that way, or mean that, you know, someone else can’t be just as good or better. We also talk about, that, if two people practice the same thing the same amount of time, it doesn’t mean necessarily they’re going to both be the same level, right, there are some natural differences between people, right, but just the simple lesson that you can become better anything you want to, if you work at it, is kind of how I approach that group, and, and I think we’ve had a lot of success with it at our, at our P.E. classes at Leander.
