Practical Skills for Physical Education

Thousands of North Americans experience serious injuries every year as a result of shoveling snow.

To some degree, this is the result of a lack of technique training. Who, after all, teaches snow-shovelers the essentials of lifting with the legs, keeping the back straight and avoiding rotational twisting of the torso while the feet are planted?

It makes me wonder why we don’t we teach practical physical skills in PE…skills like shoveling snow, lifting sofas, cutting grass or hammering nails. There’s a good chance that students will spend more time over their lives operating a snow shovel  or lawn mower  than climbing ropes or doing handstands.

But where would they practice such skills, you might ask? Hmmm. I believe that teachers should offer their own homes as physical education life-skill labs, and receive school board reimbursement for the provision of these excellent learning opportunities. I personally will be the first to volunteer. I have an old sofa that needs moving right now. My PE students could remove it using my pickup truck that could use a wash, wax and polish – another highly practical skill-set    🙂

In the meantime, here’s a video of another practical skill we can add to our curriculum – using juggling to hammer ceiling nails.

Dick Moss, Editor,
PE Update.com

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[tags]practical physical education skills,pe skills,pe curriculum,physical education curriculum,pe humor,physical education humor[/tags]