MIS Tanzania Projects 2013 - Day 1 & 2

Sitting down and looking through 20some photos on Picasa, I realize I have to verbalize (in reader-friendly format) some of my reflections. “Whoa!” is a good starting place.

I arrived in Tanzania 15 days ago and it’s been a non-stop 15 days since touch-down. It has been an incredible experience. It has taught me much about myself. It has changed the way I look at the world, as most of my travel experiences do, but this time in a much more extravagant way. It has put me in contact with a loving, passionate and influential group of students and adults who, in some way, became my temporary family for 15 days.

I’ll recap my experiences as individual blogs for each day…I know I can write too much so I’ll go day by blog!

Day 1 and 2 – Arrival and First Full Day in Africa!

I left Starnberg at an early hour (very early…3:30am) on Friday, June 28th to meet the students, their parents and other teachers…chaperone/projects coordinator/trip leader. We then arrive at Kilimanjaro International Airport around 7:30pm to be greeted by one of eight Maasai leaders in Tanzania, Dr. Ole Kunney. I met him before at MIS when he came to visit and this man seems like a pretty big deal…probably because he is! He greets all of us with a giant bear hug and then we wait to pass through immigration for an hour, collect bags and begin our journey to International School of Moshi (ISM) on this big open-air converted dump truck. Upon arrival, we’re again greeted but this time with pizza and orange juice…and room assignments for the next 10ish days. Bed was also high on my priority list and even though springs dug into me, I slept like a champ that night. Holy cow…I’m in Africa…!

The next morning we wake up, head to breakfast at a much earlier hour than I’d ever even consider on a Saturday…the first Saturday at the end of the school year…but hey! We saw Afzal there, who I quickly met at the airport when he greeted us, and enjoyed a nice meal…the cafeteria at ISM was one of the best continuous food experiences I’ve ever had in my life…and headed off to the first “project” of the trip.

So, I feel I need to back up a bit and here’s a good place to do it. I’m chaperoning a school-related (though not completely ‘school’) trip to Tanzania. I knew I wanted to do at/with MIS before I even started working here. How it works is that there’s a yearly trip to Tanzania planned by a trip leader, projects that are ‘seen to’ and planned by a trip coordinator and chaperoned by two other members of staff. Students write letters of application, have interviews and are selected to join a group of like-minded students. They then spend the school year raising funds, collecting donations and preparing for this end-of-year trip to help out those in need, experience some pretty amazing volunteer work and exude some awesome humanitarian skills. Fortunately, I was chosen as a trip chaperone!

We rolled into Neema Orphanage between 9 and 9:30 in the morning. We were welcomed by a couple of sisters (the Catholic kind) and a number of children mostly under the age of 3. There was also a group of four girls there from the States who had connections to the orphanage through their their church and who were doing a nice thing in helping out at the orphanage for 3 or 4 weeks of their summer break. It took about 1 minute (no joke), for a kid to make a move to someone from our group’s legs. These kids were SUCH a delight. They would ask your name, say hello, smile with you, want to be picked up, cuddled, still smile with you, play with your camera…just be kids! Despite not having parents, these kids has an amazing lady (Sister Hazel) and a group of staff there to help take care of all (25) of these children. What we did for this project was donate clothes and toys; the students had gathered baby clothes donations during the school year. I was very familiar with this project as I spent quite some time folding, packing, and labeling these clothes before the trip had started. Also, in a discussion with my department colleague, I learned that the idea of donating clothes in Africa is starting to be frowned upon; we should be giving them the education and tools they need to resource the making of their own clothes. Nonetheless, the clothes were very welcomed – there were a lot of them! – and you could see that these clothes would go to good use. A group of three MIS students gave a little thank you speech and officially donated the clothes, we did some handshaking but the best part of it all was the children. It was the interactions I saw the students having with the little ones, the interaction I was having with the little ones and the smiles on their faces all the while. We stayed around until 1 or 1:30, had some difficult goodbyes and headed back to ISM for lunch. First project: done! I thought it was pretty easy and would have enjoyed staying longer, but after our longish flight the day before, we were tired. After lunch, we head into the city of Moshi to exchange money and just look around. From what we see, it's a friendly little place but then again, we only see a couple of streets of it...we find out later it's not like that everywhere in the city. After an hour or so exploring around, we head back to ISM for a little down time. 

At 6ish, we sat down to dinner, with Afzal, and we realized now that we were going to be completely spoiled with delicious food for the duration of our stay at ISM...this is very good news! It didn’t matter what was going to be there, it would be delicious and the students were realizing this too. The evening was given to the students to mingle and chill out and I bonded with Mr. Joshi, Mr. Arnoldt, Mr. Huber and Afzal in his apartment. Afzal - This man is a legend at ISM and with anyone who's ever met him through the MIS Tanzania Projects. He organizes everything for the Moshi leg of the trip (which is 12 days total), he’ll do anything to accommodate you and he’s just known to be such a nice guy. He organizes many other excursions for visiting schools programs as well so someone reading this, may know him if they've ever been on a school trip to Tanzania.  

...The group of us gets to chat, share stories about past experiences in Tanzania (and elsewhere) and it was a nice wrap to the day.

First impressions of Tanzania in daylight - plants for sale in Moshi

Some of our students still not sure what to do with all these kids...

This was this guy's pose...I have a few photos of him doing it...very original! :)

Try and tell me this doesn't melt your heart!

The boy walking away had a serious connection with a couple of kids...including this one...who cried when he realized Titus was going away from him!

Instant love :)

The donations all laid out...proud moment for me of these MIS students!

Sister Hazel and two of her darlings.

Downtown Moshi...that's a big beer can!

Meat stall in Moshi Market

Hustle and bustle of the market

Our first glimpse of Mt. Kilimanjaro...amazing right?

Sports Days Success! :)

All of our Sports Days at MIS are wrapped up for the year with great success! Yay!

I was in charge of organizing the EC Sports Day this year (along with our capable assistant Mr. Sprinks) which involved planning and setting up activities for four classes of kids between the ages of 4 and 6 - my niche!

I had some great ideas from a great PE mate at Frankfurt International School to add some variety to the repertoire of activities from last year and I had a crew of two Grade 10 students and a Grade 7 class to help us out with the running of things! Last year, I had mixed the students up into different teams but this year, I just split the classes evenly into two different teams and gave each of the groups animal names and name tags, as opposed to colours which is how the other grade levels are segregated. I created instruction sheets with diagrams of the activities for the Grade 7s to lead the stations and I also chose eight students to lead the groups by carrying the animal sign/flag and helping the groups to rotate between stations. Another great part of the day is the parental involvement in organizing fruit for the students at a rest station - what would we do without their help?

The weather was touch and go with raindrops even minutes before the event started, but I was glad I made the call to have it outside anyways...and I'm sure the students were too! They all had a lot of fun and they and their parents left with smiles on their faces! :)

Check out the little video I made to show the ECers at assembly:

And below you can see the PE Newsletter I created with a collage of photos from the different Sports Days up to Grade 4! Enjoy and hope the summer weather has found you, wherever you are! :)

Coaching Girls Soccer...the Challenges and the Rewards

Back in August 2011, I took on the responsibility of coaching a middle school girls soccer (football) team here at MIS. I played soccer since I was 7 years old until I graduated high school but didn't really pursue it any further than that as I had bad knees and I wasn't quite all-star material! When I was in high school, I coached a little league team (the kids are all 19 or 20 now which is scary!) but taking on middle school girls was a bit out of my depth...

I've gotta be honest. Big kids freak me out. Well, anyone over 12 and into their teens in a classroom setting, freaks me out! I'm not sure why, I guess it's mostly the unknown of teaching them, but they've always been a road less travelled (and even more less desired) for me and my teaching career. So, diving into coaching I was obviously nervous because it was something completely new for me.

I rocked up to my first try-outs confident and having spent a couple of hours preparing drills and activities for the practice. I struggled with names, as one does when they're still trying to learn 120+ student names, and overall, it wasn't so great. The girls didn't know me, I wasn't sure of how to play my authoritative card with them and I just wasn't sure what I was doing...despite my planning. It took me a couple of practices to warm up to the girls (and for them to warm up to me) but then they showed their true colours. We weren't a particularly strong team last year but we did win a couple of games and we placed 4th out of 8 teams at our SCIS tournament. The girls also won the sportsmanship award which brought tears to my eyes because I was so proud of them. The 'big'ger kids weren't so freaky anymore and I thought pretty highly of them. At MIS, we also have a spring season of soccer and with that came a series of losses for my girls and I couldn't help but feel defeated and a bit down with our results, even though the girls were having fun.

This fall, a number of my girls moved up to the junior varsity team at school and this meant I'd have a number of new squad; this was my first struggle. Unlike the year before where I had girls to pick from for our 7/side games, I had to try and recruit girls to play soccer. Unsuccessful at doing this, and before going to our SCIS International School Tournament, we ended up having to borrow a couple of girls from the team a league lower than us. I couldn't understand why there was so little interest in a sport that I adored since I was 7 years old! But, as it turned out, the group of 8th grade kids coming through the middle school were not the most athletic bunch and other sports struggled a bit or had lower-than-usual numbers...it wasn't just me and my coaching...or so I tell myself! :P

I started off with an authoritative reign on the girls and tried to be strict in setting high expectations on our team for the season and I began planning practices that were still fun, but also involved having the girls work hard. This didn't go over so well. The girls didn't come to all practices, they would be a bit lazy when they did and I felt I had nothing to motivate them with; because of low numbers, I couldn't even say that if they didn't come to practice, they couldn't play in games because I needed everybody I could get AT the games! What is one to do in a predicament as such? I tried to rotate who was captain for our games to pass on responsibility to the different girls but found this wasn't working either. I had a really tough first season in the fall and we were winless in all of our games except at SCIS where we tied and won a game to finish in a tie for 7th place. Like at the end of our spring season, I felt defeated and like a failure as a coach because I wasn't getting any wins on the board for my girls...

Spring season rolled around again this year. I was determined. I bought a book called, "Coaching Girls Soccer Successfully" by Debra LaPrath and I was determined to make this season our best yet. I had the girls set goals, I began making files on the girls and their abilities and I watched and made notes on them in practices. Then we had our first game. We lost 0-7. Damnit! I made notes all over my game sheet of things to work on and then set to planning a practice full of activities that would help us improve on these things...but, the girls didn't seem to care. My team has some talent and as individuals they're coachable...just not so much as an entire group. I have one girl who is new to the game and wants input into what she can improve and she's committed to bettering herself as a player. There's another one in a similar boat to her but she's been playing the game for a while and I've moved her to a new position which she feels she shouldn't be playing. Somethings the team needs to work on as a whole are cooperating and communicating as one unit and building up physical endurance! We tried doing 3K runs at the beginning of practices last season but with only a few of them appreciating them and having others cheat their way through it, I decided it wasn't the best route to continue. Then, I took notice of one player, who started with me last spring, and saw potential in letting her lead the pack as captain...I thought, 'maybe this is how I can get through to the girls'.

This girl (J) is one of the only girls who would pick-up a soccer ball outside of practice and kick it around. She does this with her best friend who is also on the team but because of an injury
cannot play this season. J loves the game, she's a fan of premier league soccer and it just seems to be in her blood. She's our team's goalie (she is great at it but is hard on herself when she gets scored on) and she's always looking to better herself. She's also decided she wants to play out of the net more and probably spends more of her own time practising that, which is great, because she's really becoming a standout in her non-goalie position as well. She understands the game, it motivates her and she loves it. Could I have a better captain? ...

That's J in a nutshell on the soccer pitch. Academically, she's also made quite a name for herself...but not a good one. J has been at the school since she was 5 years old. I'm not sure when she developed the reputation that she has, but she sure does have one. She's a regular topic of discussion for staff members that have taught her and those who haven't taught her know who she is because of this reputation that follows her. She's not motivated to learn and she's got an awful attitude with and towards some of her teachers. She's out-spoken, opinionated and hot-tempered. She's the kid that doesn't see the point of so much of what's taught in school. She's not afraid to speak her mind and because of this, she's been in trouble/in detention/visited the principal's office more times in a month than I've ever been in my life. She hates school.

So, how could I pick a role model to represent a group of girls who is so academically demotivated and every teacher's worst nightmare in the classroom? Well, that's the beauty of sport.

Not every kid is going to excel in the classroom. After years of dealing with J, many must have given up on her; she's a bad egg and there's no hope for her. Though I'm sure J wants her teachers to feel this way so she can fuel her fire of hatred towards them (she is aware of what she's doing), she still needs someone to back her up. I am so happy that I can be that person. I am also glad that I do not teach her and that I get the chance to see her from my perspective. Soccer is her outlet to shine and she does just that. It motivates her and through continued praise and leadership on my team, I only hope that she'll start to turn around her negative attitude towards school...well, specifically school academics. School is not just academics and J is not at the point in her life to see that just yet...but she's getting there. A big (arguably the biggest) aspect of learning at school comes from the social side of things. Students learn how to interact with their peers, their teachers (J needs to work on that! :P) and also how to take on different roles within the school community. I'm not sure if J will ever take on a leadership role within the classroom but she's getting to experience it within a team. She's not even the oldest player on my team, but she has fostered and flourished in her captain role this year. She rounds up the troops, encourages the girls and has set goals and shared her opinions/views of our games with me in one-on-one post game situations. She leads the girls in warm-ups and has totally taken charge when she's put in the position to step-up. Last week, we had an athletics appreciation evening where we handed out Coach's Awards (or MIP) and MVPs to student athletes from the spring athletic season and I had a hard time trying to come up with a way to present this to J. Student athletes should ideally shine in both an academic and athletic light, as they're required to uphold a certain GPA as they get older. J probably wouldn't be eligible for such an award if stipulations for GPA were in place at her level but since there aren't, J was my only choice for not just a Coach's Award but MVP, too. I chose my one athlete who was new to the game and who has improved immensely as my Coach's Award recipient but felt the wording of it was most suitable for J as she's been a dream in that role. I ended up choosing her as my team MVP and gave a quick speech about why she was chosen - the emphasis of the evening was on the importance of athletics despite the academic pressures that students face, especially in high school (many grade 12 students don't play sports because of the strains of the IB Dip. program). In my case, the importance of athletics in J's school life could very well be the one thing saving her and inspiring her to carry on in school...and hopefully that helps her to change things around and erase the bad rapport she's so well-known for. She's shown her potential, she's been respectful towards me, she's made me proud and I'll go to bat for this kid in the future because she's proven to me that she deserves to have someone in her corner.

When asked to write some words for our school's magazine, J replied with this unedited blurb:
Throughout these two seasons, we had our ups and downs as a team, but most of the time we got back up, we didn't stop and not a single player took a “loss” as an answer what ever the score looked liked. And that is what made us such a unique group of friends playing a sport we all love. And as David Beckham said, Soccer is a Magical Game. And because this is such a truly magical game for every single one of us, we will continue giving our best and try even harder next season. Not only as a team have we all  grown, but also as individuals no matter how we came into our first training, we all got better. And even though the scores sometimes said otherwise, together as a team we had lots of fun and played great games and it was another wonderful soccer year.

Ready for game time!

Our team remains winless this season and we still have two games to go, with a heartbreaking loss to the top team in the league last Friday (0-1 because of a penalty shot on J in the last 10 minutes). But despite what the results show, it's been a successful season. I'm no longer focused on winning or losing so much as I know the girls will do what they're going to do in the end. When we pull off a win, it'll be a sweet victory but it's all in the hands of the girls. I've learned I can't push them, despite what another coach in my position might do, and I've put more focus on the relationships I've gained with these 'big'ger kids and on the role I can play as an adult educator in their lives. There'll be new girls next season that may adopt a different perspective of the game, but like teaching, every group has a different way of learning and doing and I'll adjust my coaching style to meet the needs of that group. J may well be my biggest success in any/all my years of coaching and I'll proudly take that over any number of trophies or medals.

MIS MS Girls Soccer Team SCIS 2012 - Soaked but still smiling!

#PEPLC - Innovation in Teaching (and Learning) PE

Having a very busy past two weeks with my social calendar, getting a bit nostalgic with the year nearly wrapping up as well as preparing for my trip to Tanzania with 24 students this summer, has taken away from my drive to blog in general, but even more so from a professional standpoint. BUT, after just watching a #PHYSEDagogy Hangout with @andyvasily and @adamhowell, I'm back on the inspiration train and nothing short of pumped on this cool, May evening in Starnberg!

Andy Vasily is an inspiring PYP PE teacher at Nanjing International School - a city very close to where I lived and worked in China. The school he's at is said to be incredible and I'm not sure how it could be any less than that with a driving force in PYP and PE like Andy. He has his own website where he shares his best practices and it's been a spot I've frequented over the past two years to learn tips and tricks of the trade, but also to encourage myself that I am on the right track and that I am doing things right. On top of all of this awesomeness, Andy, along with some other PE innovators, has just launched the #PEPLC - the Physical Education Professional Learning Circle. What is it, aside from awesome? Well, it's a Google+ group that will eventually place PE teachers into learning teams that will meet via Google+ Hangouts to discuss best teaching practices in their area of highest interest. Upon sign-up, teachers chose an area of greatest interest for them that will help the #PEPLC initiators to sort them into learning teams: Assessment; Innovation & Technology; Curriculum & Programming; Leadership & Mentoring; Instructional Models in PE.

I filled out the form on Monday (nearly a week past the deadline) but my fingers are still crossed that there's a chance for me to get involved for myself, but also as a representative of my PE Team at MIS; we have some great ideas to share with the wider community but we also stand to learn a lot from all of this. (Quite frankly, I don't know how anyone who wants to better themselves as an educator (in PE) could afford to miss out on such a great PD opportunity and I'm kicking my a** that I dropped the ball with the late sign-up!) I've set up my Google+ account to allow Hangouts and have asked to join the #PEPLC Circle so I guess we'll see what happens from there...keep your fingers crossed for me!

Despite potentially blowing my chances, I intend on keeping up and trying to contribute when and where I can in the PEPLC. The vision statement that will guide the entire project was released this week along with the next steps for those wanting to be involved. The goal is for the learning teams to meet at least once a month to discuss and share what they've done to try to improve their teaching in their chosen area(s) of interest, provide evidence of how they've done this, reflect, have others in the group go out and try what they've learned from their group members and then report back again with evidence of what worked, what didn't work or share modifications they may have made. It's a powerful tool and with constant sharing and keeping things going within the group, it's sure to improve not only the way we teach, but how the students learn; after all, they're the reason we do what we do!

At MIS, we've spent the past year reviewing, meeting, tweaking and just finalizing the PYP PSPE Scope and Sequence. As a member of the PYP Curriculum Development Team, myself and one other colleague were responsible for making this our baby and now I'm onto reviewing the Social Studies S&S as it's another area of interest for me. That being said, I enjoy curriculum work but have opted to be a part of the "Assessment" or "Instructional Models in PE" groups when I submitted my request to join PEPLC. Following on with the next steps, those who signed up were encouraged to keep a journal where they would record questions about the themes they chose, the pros and cons of their current teaching within the theme and what they're hoping to get out of the PEPLC in relation to the theme. I've decided that my blog would be a good place for me to record my thoughts and feelings on the themes I have chosen and I will continue to use my blog as an outlet to reflect on my teaching and learning as the PEPLC gets up and running...with or without me! :)

Assessment in PE
This is an area that will always be changing and needing adjustments based on the abilities and needs of the students in our classes. What I try to do is provide a lot of open-ended assessments where students have choices, for example, with dance or gymnastics, I let the students choose music and create their own dances to perform for the class, or I let them focus in on a specific skill that they are most confident in demonstrating; however, there are some cases where I feel the opportunity to provide choice is limited.
When assessing, I try to put more emphasis onto the process of learning so that students are graded throughout the duration of the unit and also so progress from start to finish can be monitored. I use a lot of iPads for performance assessment pieces and we will move into using Google Drive and Forms documents to keep track of student skill abilities throughout units next year. I know there are a lot of other great apps out there as well that I'm keen to start trying out.
At current, we also use fitness appraisals and goal settings to help students see and take ownership of their progress and so they're aware of areas that need improvement. Students are given chances to do make-ups/re-dos of different activities as part of the fitness appraisal process (upon their request) to ensure they don't feel too defeated if they're having an off day - it's important that one day's attempts don't reflect the students' overall abilities!
I'm really curious to learn more about what others do with fitness testing and how/if it's factored into assessing student progress/ability at all. I'm also curious to learn how much choice is given to students, how we can foster student choice in assessments in PE more and what things are being weighted when assessing student ability. I am a big fan of peer and self assessments in PE and am wondering what others might do to ensure the feedback given by students is meaningful and appropriate. Along the lines of assessing, I wonder what reporting looks like in PE at other schools - Are sportfolios popular? What are some examples of portfolio work? And what criteria are the kids being 'graded' on in report cards?

Instructional Models in PE
This is probably my biggest area of weakness. I have a loud voice and I definitely use it to my advantage in the gyms but I've been told I may be too loud which is fair, but I'm naturally a loud person than most...but I totally think it's an enthusiastic loud! I do try to pull out the quiet cues now and again but because I know I can overpower the sound of children running and screaming during an intense game of tag, I sometimes use that to round them up again - definitely something I need to work on limiting! :P I also understand 'being loud' isn't so much a instructional method but hey, it goes hand in hand with my teaching!
I guess my philosophy with instruction is to get the students active for the majority of the class and have them (still) smiling at the end. I absolutely loved PE as a kid (as I'm sure all PE teachers did!) and I hope to recreate that enthusiasm that I had for my students, which isn't always possible; it'll never be everyone's favourite but it doesn't mean I'll stop trying! 
I like to use the iPhysEd/Kath Murdoch Inquiry Cycle in planning my classes and this guides my instruction a bit as I get kids focusing on different stages of the cycle throughout the unit. I am also a big fan of stations and getting students rotating around to experiment with different balls or targets, for example, during a unit that focuses on throwing and catching in kindergarten; I try to incorporate stations in my instruction wherever I can (they're awesome as a provocation and to gauge student learning and the beginning and end of a unit) as they keep students moving and interested in 'what's next' but they're not always possible with limited set-up/take-down time.
Involving inquiry in instruction is something I place a lot of value upon and I'm very interested in learning more about how others do this with their methods of instruction. I'm also interested in learning more about differentiation and modification of games for unique learners and how that's incorporated in others' teaching.  
Behaviour management is also something that comes into play within our instruction and I'm curious about how others go about this; I learn best from watching my colleagues and getting tips from just observing them teach. I have classroom training for elementary students (most experience with kindergarten and grade one) and the behaviour management techniques I used in the classroom don't apply so well to some gym/large space settings when it is in a child's nature to just get up, run around and, well, be physical. I'm a kinesthetic learner and I learn best by watching and then doing so my hopes are that within this group, a lot of videos may be posted of teachers in action with their PE classes - I figure that alongside their instructional models that will be on display, I'll also get the bonus of seeing behaviour management techniques at work! 

Those are just some of the immediate thoughts to keep me thinking about what I want to accomplish from joining the PEPLC but I'm also excited at the prospect of learning about anything/everything PE and also sharing my best practices with others! Wish me luck! :)

Passing the 'SURPRISE!' torch...

As an awesome addition to all the awesomeness that was my 30th birthday weekend, my best friend Amanda flew to Munich from Halifax and with the help of a fabulous friend here, Tina, she surprised the heck out of me! I cried, I laughed and I couldn't believe it. She helped me join in some awesome celebrations and it was the best surprise I've ever had!

On Tuesday, I had my PE Team (and family) over to my place for some birthday dinner goodness and we had a great time chatting and also reminiscing about the intense beer pong tournament that was had two days earlier. Somewhere along the way, one of my teammates (Mike - the wise, fatherly figure in our group) mentioned that he'd LOVE to see Bruce Springsteen in concert. Well, it just so happens that Bruce Springsteen was set to play in Munich on Sunday, May 26th - how could I not look into it? Especially given the amazing vibes of positive energy and good karma that I had over the past few days from others, including Mike? So, that's what I did. A couple of emails later, and a few Euros poorer, I had booked two tickets to see The Boss Live on behalf of my PE Team...and Mike would remain completely unaware of it until Sunday night.

This weekend at school, MIS hosted the Middle School Girls' SCIS Softball tournament and Mike, a legend in his own right, organized and set the whole thing up. It ran smoothly and I knew this man would be nothing short of tired come Sunday when the madness was all wrapped up. I told him on Friday that he was coming to my house for dinner on Sunday, reminded him on Saturday and then called him Sunday to make sure he wasn't late. When he showed up at my apartment, I was waiting outside for him (in the cold rain) to break the news that my cooking attempts had failed and that we would be going to another team member's house for dinner. I told Mike that I kept this information from him until that moment because I was afraid he'd back out of the idea of taking the train into Munich on a Sunday night when he was already exhausted. He did, however, go along with the plan and when we arrived in Munich, transferred twice, and hopped off at Olympiazentrum Station, he was confused as to what was going on. I insisted that it was just a busy Sunday and he was surprised that Dan lived so close to Olympic Park. The rest of what ensued was caught on camera and if it doesn't bring a smile to your face, I don't know what will!

Callero's Surprise!

Isn't it just awesome when a surprise works out?! I was so excited for it that I almost ruined it a couple of times but I'm pretty glad I didn't! The feeling of surprising someone else is just as great as the feeling of being surprised, which is a fabulous feeling! I'm a firm believer of doing unto others as you'd have done to you so this was a perfect opportunity to do so while I was still stoked from my surprise a week earlier!

I'm not a huge Bruce fan myself, but I figured the opportunity to share this concert going experience with Mike was something not to be missed. He gave background info to most of the songs Bruce performed, whether it be where he was when he first heard it, how he used to rock out to it with his wife and kids or just general knowledge about Bruce, his lyrics and how they affect him. It was just awesome. A big thanks to my team for helping me to pull this off and for helping to give Mike an unforgettable parting gift - he'll leave us at the end of the year and join his wife in Costa Rica and man o man, I'll miss him!

On turning 30...

That's right! I'm 30 now! I bid adieu to my 20s and entered a new decade on Tuesday at 7:11am.

I had been dreading leaving my twenties and facing the fact that I am no longer a young adult but an adult. I'm in a new age bracket. And, I'm no longer going to be the 'baby' at schools where I work. Since I began teaching ESL straight out of university, I was always the youngin at schools...until I showed up at MIS and had at least five people younger than me at my workplace. Now, I'm facing the fact that only five is probably as low as this number will be...but hey, it's time to grow up, right?! Well...maybe, maybe not!

To celebrate leaving my 20s, I had a costume party in Munich with a letter 'M' theme - thanks to my friend Tristan (nicknamed Piggy) who had a letter 'P' party in Australia for his 21st. I had been planning this party for several months and collecting items to make my costume as awesome as I could, given the occasion. I don't tend to celebrate big on my birthday(s) but I wanted this party to be something special...which it certainly was!

Oooh yeaaah!

Can you dig it!?

I'm the (one and only) Macho Man (Randy Savage) *insert deep, manly voice*. I loved wrestling growing up (watching reruns of WWF (now WWE) Summer Slam make me seriously question my youth tv preferences, but hey, it was the 90s) so I wanted to honour a bit of my past with a costume I knew would rival another costume I wore for Halloween one year...well, three years but this particular version was the best. This fierce Sponge Bob costume took a LOT of time to paint and perfect so I was sad to leave it behind when I left Korea... It won me beerwards on the big day and, well, it's just hard to say goodbye to something you brought to life, isn't it? :P

Sponge Bob Square Pants - Halloween 2008, Seoul

My version of Macho Man did compare in real life likeability, in my opinion, to the real deal but the attention it got me surpassed what I got with Sponge Bob - I had a fan club! Yup! I also had several stares (some happy ones, some cranky 'WTF?' ones) on my way to the train station, on the train and upon arrival at my birthday party venue - The Hofbraukeller in Munich. It was a rainy and cold (not cool, cold) Sunday afternoon but when I walked through the beer hall to set up our beer pong tournament area, I caught the attention of four little girls who would soon become hardcore Macho Maniacs. These girls made my day! Check out the video below:

Macho Man Beer Pong

Before every shot I took in a game, they would pat me on the back, yell words of encouragement to me and then even made me signs to hopefully get me to the finals; sadly, that didn't happen. I was also very fortunate to have all of this caught on tape as my best friend, Amanda, was there to capture it all. Another amazing part of my amazing weekend was the fact that Amanda was there - she flew all the way from Canada JUST for my birthday celebration..and she even brought lobsters with her from home! She's amazing! On top of that, I had most of the people who I had invited, show up to celebrate my birthday, most with costumes to the theme as well. I celebrated for 16 hours that day and still felt great the following morning because I was still on such a high from all the greatness of the day before.

I had a fan club cheering for me, my best friend from home, a packed beer hall room full of friends and a solid 24 hours of laughter and tears of joy to kick start my 30s! When the calendar actually rolled on May 21st, I received flower deliveries from a far and lots of love and well wishes in one form or another to remind me that life is good and I'm ready to take on this new decade; I couldn't be more grateful or feel any more fortunate! :)

Love from near and far - You can't beat cards! :)

Flower deliveries to brighten my day!

Assessment Time Again!

We're in our final week of our second last units of the year at MIS so that means it's assessment tiiiiiime!

Among the units being assessed are: Individual Pursuits II for EC 4/5, Adventure Challenge for EC 5/6, a gymnastics unit for Grade 1s, a dance unit and a games unit for Grade 2s and Health-Related Fitness and Individual Pursuits for Grade 3s. At the beginning of the year, I created a PYP Programme of Inquiry and a schedule for when we teach the different units. (I don't teach Grade 4 so I've not included them in my post about assessment.) It's been a really helpful tool to help organize us (mainly me) for the year and so I know what's coming up - of course, there were mishaps (as with any schedule) so it's not completely accurate to how/what we've taught this year! I'm looking forward to doing next year's plan soon so that I can add in some activities that worked really well (such as wii just dance recordings on YouTube for dance) while they're still fresh in mind. Speaking of freshness, I've been busy working on PYP planners for PE (it's my mission to get them done before I leave) so they've occupied me from 'blogging' on a more regular basis; I'll be sure to post one when I figure out which one is best!

So, back on track, assessments:

The EC 4/5 group this year has been a challenge for me to teach. Last year, they were my favourite group, they were the best listeners, they were on the ball and awesome. This year hasn't been quite the same experience. There is a higher boy:girl ratio so most of the time, I find myself dealing with boy on boy fight action. For this unit (individual pursuits part 2), I taught them some ball and racquet skills but when they requested the floor hockey sticks, how could I refuse? We have benchmarks (that need to be revisited, I feel) for the different age groups and the units so I refer to this but for the most part, I stick to verbal self-assessments with these guys.

The EC 5/6 group is doing my favourite unit of all units but because of bad weather (and their unpreparedness for the weather) we didn't have so many chances to go outside and explore in nature. For this unit, I like to set up scavenger hunts along with other outdoor team relays, activities and games; I still focused on these but in an indoor space which was quite small as the big gyms tend to be in use during my classes (the joys of a cross school department). The assessment task for this will be a choice of smiley faces to circle regarding how students thought they worked in teams, how many people they worked best with and a check box for the team activity they liked best and I make note of how well I thought they worked in the teams - this is an important unit for social skills and it's something that really needs to be emphasized in PE, in my opinion!

For gymnastics with my Grade 1s, I've been team teaching with a colleague which has been very helpful to ensure safety but also to maximize the stations that students can participate in. We also have two exceptional student helpers that help us out with doing these stations so we've been lucky - and the Grade 1 students reap the benefits. We had the students do a self-assessment of their skills (smiley faces to colour) and then we'll go on to look at their abilities and grade them ourselves sing the benchmarks that have been in place since before my arrival at MIS.

With the Grade 2s in their Games Unit, I'll be doing the same assessment that I did last year (and that I posted on here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlCbSC0T-o4
I'm really excited to see what the kiddos come up with this week and I'll be sure to post a new video of their awesome games creations!
Because of a mess-up, my other Grade 2 class is doing their Movement Composition - Dance Unit which is meant to tie in with their "How We Express Ourselves" UoI and a performance (talent show) that they put on for the whole school and their parents. What I've been doing is playing sounds/music to evoke different emotions along with using an emotions booklet thing that I have. Students then take turns showing us dances/movements that are meant to represent different emotions and we guess what emotion is shown. At the end of the unit, and for 'assessment', we will choose four emotions as a class and create a sequence that we can then perform for the parents on the performance day.

Finally, with my Grade 3s, we worked on Fitness Appraisals for the first bit of the unit but then the rest was very inquiry-based as I asked them what activities they'd like to do - as long as their heartbeats were up and they were exploring different kinds of physical activity (conventional or not), then I was happy. We did a Zumba class, step aerobics, Judo and just played some other games (they love games) that had them working up a sweat. I haven't thought of an 'assessment' task for this though...but if they were participating, having fun and sweating, is that not assessment proof enough?
The other class doing basketball, demonstrated their understanding of skills as I went around with a checklist observing them. I have to note as well, I have a 3rd grade student who can hit 3-point shots (at least 1 in 10) which is pretty impressive!

And this is how my units are wrapping up this week BUT I've got some great resources to share that I'm keen to try for next year with assessing. I'm most keen to try the Easy Portfolio App (see here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZPbq_D355E) and work on getting digital portfolios set up for students with evidence from all their units right there for their parents and everyone to see.

Here's where I need your help! What sort of things are all you bloggers out there using to assess in PE? I'm excited and open to trying new things and hope that I can share some great ideas with you readers as well!

WOW! As I posted this, I just saw that http://www.iphys-ed.com/inquiry-in-pe.html has set up a blog sharing option for PE educators and I'm really hoping to learn a lot from those who are sharing on here...and to get some feedback on assessments that are happening in other schools! Awesome, awesome, awesome! :)