Badminton Finals/The President's Challenge

This week, we ranked all the 8th grade badminton teams according to their record from last week. There were three groups. Group A was the 1st-4th place teams. Group B was the 5th-8th place teams and lastly was Group C with the remainder of the teams. With the 7th and 6th graders we had them performing the 1 minute sit-ups test, sit and reach test, shuttle run and the push ups test.

Hope College Alumni Soccer Match

On Saturday I went to Hope College for a reunion soccer match on the Colleges brand new Soccer Stadium. There were about 24 Alumni soccer players who came. We played on the turf field and then had a barbecue following. It was a great day to see my former teammates and friends at Hope. I look forward to next years reunion.

Day w/Special Education Students in Owosso MI

On friday I went to school with my mom who has been teaching for the past 40 years! She is a Special Education Teacher in Owosso. She works with 18-26 year old students on life skills. She helps them find their own apartments, budget accounts and find jobs. Friday was a choice day for her students. I offered to teach basketball and soccer. I had 11 students playing basketball with me in the morning. In the afternoon we took 6 students to the park to play soccer. It was a great experience and the students were eager to learn and were very interested in my College Soccer career at Hope College.

NMU Photo Shoot

Jason Jones a professional photographer hired by NMU came and took those photos of me working with some 5th graders during a Soccer Lesson.

Badminton

This week we are playing Badminton with 6th-8th graders. Yesterday we worked on the serve and today we worked on forehand and backhand strokes. We play by the official rules of Badminton and divide the student so they can play doubles. Most of the students are understanding the rules but some need a bit more reiteration. Badminton is one of my favorite yard games. It's quite easy to pick up and a lot fun to play.

Final Cross Country Meet 10-13-10

Our final Cross Country Meet was held yesterday at the Fit Strip located right in Marquette. The Fit strip is a wonderful trail through some woods on the outskirts of town. Along the trail there are fitness stations with diagrams of the activity at each station. The race for our students was the longest distance this year or 1.75 miles. The kids ran their hearts out and it was wonderful to see the progress we made with our brief but wonderful season.

Professional Development Day 10-8-10

On Friday there were no classes for the students. The teachers although had to come in for a Professional Development day. Throughout the school year there are a certain amount of hours that have to be spent for professional development. We spent the day discussing issues with students and schedule conflicts and what resolutions we thought would work best. The social studies department was cleaning out their closet of books and I was fortunate enough to be able to obtain some great US History books for my own personal library. I even got a really nifty globe :). After school I headed to the the NMU soccer practice field and played with some friends in the warm 70 degree afternoon!

Disc Golf Lesson/Girls Basketball Game

Today was my final day working with Mrs. McKinley's class. Bothwell is putting in a new Disc Golf course behind the school. The course will have 4 holes to begin, hopefully adding 5 more in the future to make a 9 hole course. For today, I used our PE portable nets for the course and set up 8 holes behind the school. I instructed the students on how to throw the Frisbee and the rules of play. I then broke them into pairs and assigned them a hole to begin with. The pairs had their own score card and a marker to keep track of how many throws it took them to make it into the net. The students were really excited to play and it was a sunny warm fall afternoon. I was excited to be able to teach the students how to play the game since their will soon be a course in their "backyard" so to say. Before we began I asked the class of 28 students if any of them had ever played and only 2 students raised their hands.

This evening I spent my time working the clock at the 7th and 8th grade Girls Basketball games. I'm happy to report that both teams played really well and I saw some great sportsmanship from both Bothwell and the visiting Negaunee teams. I have been really impressed with the caliber of play from the 8th grade squad. They are an extremely talented group of young athletes. Their court awareness and tenacity on defense bring them to a higher level of play then most middle school teams can handle. They are really fun to watch and I am glad I can help out by working the clock.

Sideline Soccer w/5th Grade

Today, the frost advisory kept us indoors for 1st hour with the 5th graders. I had the students play sideline soccer so everyone was actively participating in the game but the field was not to crowded because two of the teams lined up on the sideline. The sideline teams could pass the ball to either of the teams that were playing on the field. I also would designate the sidelines to do jumping jacks or high knees. This worked really well and the students had a lot of fun :)

Nature Hike with Mrs. McKinley's Class

Today for Mrs. McKinley's class I took the students on a hike. I took them on the beautiful trail right behind the School. Almost all of the students didn't even know there was a trail there! The leaves are in full color and the students really enjoyed the winding trail through the woods. I identified some trees with the students and which trees certain leaves belonged to. We ended our hike on a bridge that looked out at Marquette Mountain Ski Hill. I talked to the students about what sorts of activities they could do at the mountain in winter and also in the summer/fall. There are a ton of great trails that you can hike, bike or run on. It was a perfect fall day.