Here is the recording from our latest #PEChat Radio Hour! For this episode, I connected with Mark Friedrich on Twitter Spaces.

Mark Friedrich is an Adventure Education and Health Education teacher at Millburn High School in Millburn, New Jersey. Mark has been a member of Millburn's Health & PE Department for 16 years. During those years, he has created an Adventure Education program that is not only one of the largest in his state, it's also the envy of many educators out there (this guy included).

Mark was named the 2016 NJAHPERD Secondary Physical Education Teacher of the Year and he was also the recipient of the 2021 SHAPE America Joy of Effort Award, which honors individuals who, by performance and style, have personified the concept that the effort made to enrich the goals and objectives of health and physical education, physical activity, dance, and sport is a labor of love, inspired by commitment and dedication.

When he's not helping students through high-ropes courses, chasing snakes out of his teaching space, or participating in Tough Mudders, Mark travels across the US to present to local, state, and national organizations on the topics of teambuilding, icebreaker activities, problem solving, trust building, and adventure games.

It was an absolute honour to have Mark as our guest for #PEChat Radio Hour and I'm so glad he got to melt our faces - or at least our ears - with his incredible passion for Adventure Education.

🙏 A huge thank you to Mark for taking time out of his schedule to help us get fired up about adventure education! Also, thank you to the follow teachers for getting involved during our Q&A session:

👀 You can find the show notes for this #PEChat Radio Hour here: https://thephysicaleducator.com/2021/10/05/pechat-radio-hour-adventure-education/

🥳 Happy Teaching!

Here is the recording from our first-ever #PEChat Radio Hour! For this episode, I connected with Karl Mercuri on Twitter Spaces.

Karl Mercuri is the Social and Emotional Learning Coordinator at The Priory School and a private SEL consultant across schools here in the Greater Montreal area. Originally from Melbourne (Australia), Karl actually started his career teaching physical education there. Earlier in his career, Karl was a facilitator of Kidsmatter (now Be You): a Mental Health and Wellbeing Framework that is implemented throughout Australia. He has dedicated his career to supporting effective social and emotional learning in schools. From studying challenging behaviours, to being trained in positive psychology, to completing courses in emotional intelligence and - more recently - training with The Mehrit Centre in self-regulation: Karl has an absolute wealth of knowledge and experience that he can share with the world and I am so excited to have him on the show.

🙏 A huge thank you to Karl for taking time out of his schedule to help us better understand the role of social and emotional learning. Also, thank you to Dan (@gym_stover) for getting involved during our Q&A session!

👀 You can find the show notes for this #PEChat Radio Hour here: https://thephysicaleducator.com/2021/05/25/social-and-emotional-learning-karl-mercuri/

🥳 Happy Teaching!

This is a recap of our latest #pechat that took place on Twitter Spaces!

For this #pechat, we hosted a #PhysEd Pub PD: a Space where physical education teachers get to hang out, take turns sharing ideas, and learning from each other. 

Shout out to all of the awesome teachers who stepped up and shared an idea during the chat:

• Nathan (@PENathan) who shared an idea on how we can highlight physical activity opportunities that exist our communities.

• Travis (@NorthShoreVB) who shared a game called "Softi Keep Away" that his students love.

• Karl (@Karl_Mercuri) who shared insight into the value of performing emotional check-ins throughout your lessons.

• Dan (@gym_stover) who shared a great way to strengthen relationships at the start of each lesson.

• Kate (@KateCoxPE) who shared how she has focused on infusing her lessons and activities with fun!

• Jo (@LovePhyEd) who shared some insight into her adventure education lessons and talked about meaningful PE.

This was the very first #PhysEd Pub PD that I've hosted as a #pechat and I already can't wait until the next one! I hope that you can join us for the live show on Twitter Spaces. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @phys_educator to be able to join in!

🥳 Happy Teaching!

The school year is coming to an end. If you're an elementary school teacher, that means that Field Day season is about to begin!

Having taught elementary school physical education for the past ten years, I've had the responsibility of planning a whole-school Field Day event each school year. Planning an event of this size - with all of its moving parts - can be intimidating. That being said, I decided to sit down and create a walkthrough on how I went about planning my take on Field Day: The Interplanetary Games.

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• The context and origin of my Field Day model.

• How we divided the entire school up into Field Day teams.

• How we used friendly competition to bring students together across grades.

• How we ensured that each station ran like a well-oiled machine. 

• The logistics involved in making sure the day was a success.

• The activities we included in our Field Day plans.

• Some tips that I have for teachers getting started with their first Field Day planning.

This episode is accompanied by a show notes blog post in which you'll find additional details, images, and resources that complement what you'll hear about here. Find the show notes here: https://thephysicaleducator.com/2021/05/07/the-interplanetary-games-field-day/

Thanks so much for subscribing, listening, and sharing! 

🥳 Happy Teaching!

For the past 10 years, I've used the month of May to bring my school community together through a variety of health-based programs, challenges, and advocacy pieces. I call the whole initiative "Health Month" and it honestly helped transform the way my school focused on health and wellness.

Health Month is an opportunity for you to boost your program's visibility, strengthen partnerships and relationships with families, engage your faculty, and - most importantly - create fun, memorable, learning-based experiences for your students!

The initiative can be broken down into five parts:

🗓 Month-Long Challenges

💪 Physical Activity Week

🧠 Mental Health Week

🍎 Nutrition Week

😴 Sleep Week

Although I cover each of these parts in the podcast, feel free to check out the five blog posts I wrote to complement this episode to see some of the visuals I created and find even more details on Health Month's different resources and challenges. Just click the links above to jump to each blog post!

The version of Health Month that I share in this episode is the product of ten years of tinkering, designing, listening, and evolving. That said, you can access all of the resources I've created for Health Month (including the email templates I sent to parents) in the Health Month Teacher Pack. 

This year has been incredibly tough on schools and their communities (not to mention their physical education teachers!) I know from experience that Health Month has the power to unite your school's community all while positioning you as the healthy school champion who makes that happen. I hope that this episode - in combination with the Health Month blog post mini-series and the Health Month Teacher Pack - provides you with everything you need to bring Health Month to your school and give your students, faculty, admin, staff, and families something to cheer about!

As always, thanks for listening and happy teaching! 🙌

Here's a different kind of episode! Think of this as "Story Time with Joey".

I recently got to hear my friend/mentor Artie Kamiya share a story he called "The Boy, The Rope, & The Truth". The story touched on the lasting impact that teachers can have on the lives of the students they teach.

For today's story time episode, I wanted to share a few stories from my teaching that highlighted the role of our work as educators and how it goes beyond just standards and outcomes.

I hope you enjoy it! Thanks for listening, subscribing, and sharing!

Happy Teaching!

🎉 Here is my first-ever Q&A episode!

After hesitating on doing one of these forever, I finally decided to dive in and give this a go. In this episode, I do my best to answer the following three questions (and shout out to the three awesome listeners who shared!):

I'll be answering additional questions that were submitted in future editions of this Q&A series! If you'd like to submit a question yourself, you can do so here: https://t.co/VpvVIxzIYx?amp=1

Feel free to check out the show notes for this podcast in which I share additional links and resources that I mentioned in my answers: https://thephysicaleducator.com/2021/02/22/phased-show-podcast-questions-and-answers-001/

Thanks for listening! Happy Teaching!

Not all moments in our teaching feel like big wins. Sometimes they feel like bellyflops. 🌊

In this episode, I'll be sharing a bellyflop moment from my teaching: the virtual rock-paper-scissors tournament that I organized for my students during the 2020 spring lockdown. My intention here is to help you see how - even when something feels like a total fail - our efforts can still result in lessons to be learned and wins to be celebrated.

It can be so easy to only want to talk about our success stories. That being said, the more we are willing to talk about our bellyflop moments, the more we can learn from them (and help others learn as well!)

Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode of The #PhysEd Show to see and access some of the resources I made for this tournament.

🔗 https://thephysicaleducator.com/2021/02/09/virtual-rock-paper-scissors-tournament/

This is a pretty personal episode for me. I'll be opening up and letting you into some of the health issues that I have been living with. I'll also be sharing what I've done in order to prioritize my health and my family.

You can find a transcript of this podcast here: https://thephysicaleducator.com/2021/01/18/begin-again/

Here are some important resources for anyone who may be suffering from the state of their mental health:

Canada Suicide Prevention Service

US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Thank you for your support and kindness! 🙏

I oftentimes have to resist the urge to spend time talking about tech. I could waste hours and hours on sites like Product Hunt and YourStack where professionals share insights into the apps they include in their workflows (their tech "stacks"). 

That being said, it's January and I was looking for a fun way to shake the last remaining holiday vibes and get my mind back into content creation mode. I decided now would be a fine time to sit down and share the apps, tools, gadgets, and gizmos that I made the most use of in 2020.

Be sure to check out the blog post I typed up to complement this episode of The #PhysEd Show Podcast in which I share links to everything I mentioned!

Show Notes: https://thephysicaleducator.com/2021/01/08/2020-apps-tools-i-use-the-most/