German Women's National Team

This morning I got up to go for a run like I do every morning and there was a large group of young women playing soccer next to the path where I run. As I was running forward my RA of my dormitory hall told me to take my head phones out and told me that it was the German Women's National Soccer Team. It was absolutely amazing! They were literally all training running up and down the stairs about 10 feet from me. It was so inspirational to see them all training together as a team. It was especially special because they were training at the University where I am attending for my studies.

In Cologne Germany

At this point I have now been studying at the Sport Univeristy of Cologne Germany for about 2 weeks. It is the most amazing thing I think I have ever done. The university is all about sports and being physically educated. Everyone here is so active and it makes it easy to fit in a live a very healthy lifestyle. Each week I have a bunch of really interesting classes from adventure education to kickboxing, as well as sport sponsorship and event management. This is the perfect place for me to be since I am a dual major. I'm able to study both phycial education and sport managment. It's kind of difficult not speaking the German language but it hasn't seem to pose as a huge problem yet since all of my classes are in english except for one. This whole experience is just amazing. I have been meeting new people from all over the world, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, and England just to name a few. I have been learning how to play a bunch of new games from my friends from Australia. They have tons of very interesting games they play that I had never heard of before. I'm very excited to learn all of them. Today I have my soccer class and then my first German language class. This weekend is the Easter break though and some friends and I will be traveling to Paris for the weekend. We are renting a car and this should really be an experience. I'm so excited to learn more culture and ways of teaching here at the German Sport University.

St. Mary's Lab 6 Super Hero Theme

Today at St. Mary's my group had special projects. We had to clean up the equipment room and do the normal stuff but we also had to talk with our peers about their experiences there at St. Mary's over the past 6 weeks. We all reflected on some of our favorite moments and how St. Mary's has defined who were believe we are and are going into as teachers. Besides reflected also my group dressed up as Supermen and women which really got the students into it. We had the last game and it was a tag game I made up with a superman twist on it. I split up the group into two different groups. Half of the class would have bean bags or snowball and they would be the Lex Luthers who had kryptonite. They would be running around chasing the rest of the class who would be the Supermen. If one of the Supermen was tagged with the Kryptonite they would obviously be weaker and needed to go to the re-charge zone. The re-charge zone would be a designated area in the corner of the gym where the "supermen" would have to do either 10 "super-jacks" or "blast offs" to re enter the game. The game seemed to work really well and the fact that the students could pretend and play the roles of characters from the super hero game they really liked. Overall I'm actually really going to miss St. Mary's and working with some of the students. Going there every other week it was easy to form bonds with certain students and being able to come back each week and see that you made an impact on them because they remember you was great. I hope that one day I can get a teaching position like at St. Mary's in an elementary school. I really enjoyed it.

Harry Harlow Monkey Experiment

St. Mary's Lab 5 Toy Story (Kicking and Dribbling)

Today at St. Mary's we were faced with dealing with a different environment. Today the chorus was using the gym which forced us to move outside and downstairs in the cafeteria. My game was a station game where some of the characters from toy story were at each station and at each station would be different activities to perform related to the specific character. At the alien station the children jumped rope, the buzz lightyear station they dribbled the threw the ball up against the wall (to infinity and beyond), the woody station they kicked it like the cowboy woody and passed soccer balls back the forth with a partner, and at the piggy station students had a coin toss with each other with snowballs and then would put the "coins" into the piggy bank. Overall I felt the stations worked out really well and we were able to evaluate the student's skills with dribbling and kicking a ball. At some points I got a little frustrated with some of the students who didn't want to participate and cooperate because it was after school and they just wanted to do their own thing. Once I stepped back and realized that it was going two students out of a whole bunch I felt more successful. I guess you will always face those couple that won't listen and will be defiant. I really did enjoy my experience today though and I think i'm finally starting to really get the hang of it.

Easter at St. Mary's

Lab 4 was a lot of fun at St. Mary's. Lab 4 was an Easter theme and we had to use the skills of throwing and catching in a game with an Easter theme. My group wore bunny ears into the school which really got the students excited. We also make photo collage decorations thanking St. Mary's for letting us come to their facility. Besides making signs, my group created a game and song for the closing of the day. Our song's lyrics were, I'm a little bunny, I'm a little bunny. Hip Hip Hop, Hip, Hip Hop, I run all day, Searching for Carrots, Yes I do, Yes I do. Also we created a game that included Easter egg cards that I had made before hand and on the other side of the cards would be an exercise or locomotor skill the students and a partner would have to perform before being able to take an Easter egg they would throw to each other and eventually put into their Easter basket. The team to fill up their Easter basket first with the eggs was designated the winner. They game I felt went really well and was fun to play at the same time. Since starting at St. Mary's I'm really beginning to enjoy it. Even though sometimes there are difficulties, I feel like we are beginning to learn how to handle the obstacles.

Thank You St. Mary's