Day 5- conference day 3

US GAMES/openphysed.com opened proceedings on day 3 with an amazing initiative that sees them create a online space where teachers can upload and download lesson ideas that are inline with teaching standards. Best part of this curriculum is that they are all in word doc so they are easily edited.

Connecting is great but I appreciate both sides of the conversation. To listen comes great respect and to contribute to the value of a discussion leads to a great outcome.

It continues to resonate with me that my role in life is to continue to activate, educate and advocate. Inspire through doing, resolve through discussing and achieve through building.

One burning desire was still seeming unlikely until I saw a gap in the field and decided to take a chance and run with it. I was so desperate to see where my presentation skills stood compared to those that I had been involved in during the week. So at 10am I tweeted " #physed teachers at #SHAPEseattle, who wants to play cricket, meet me @ 2:45pm today in Ballroom 6C". With a few retweets and another push at midday we had ourselves an audience. The power of social media is so important and this was a great example of best practice models. Delegates didn't have to come, they didn't have to play, but come they did. To boost numbers and get a few more PE teachers through the door I did want any young aspiring leader who do with an Aussie accent, I went out into the middle of the conference corridor and started to sell my presentation and point people in the right direction. After all the best person to sell yourself is you!! Leading by example we set the field and taught backwards through the game, starting with lots of questions as I set the field and was busy assisting the American Teachers with the correct batting stance. The bowling technique was questionable but when applied with the 'Pull the rope' technique they understood the straight arm policy with more clarity. We used the T20 Blast model from CricketAustralia.com.au and awarded double points for straight shots played. The only downside is that it is damn hard to find a cricket bat in this town. Instruction leadership gave the teachers that attended a unique experience spurred on by a desire to present. My goal was to give a taste of the sport and a few tips to go away with along with a website to then go back to their own schools and explore the sport more. I really enjoyed the interest it generate and was delighted to see heads popping through the door if only for a minute to view the learning situation.

Baseball night

Safeco Field is the home of the Seattle Mariners and this particular night it played host to 400 teachers sponsored by Gofer Sports. @schallmoserPE13 and I attended together and had a ball. This baseball club is amazing and as we were lead on a tour by Helen, who was a really lovely team player, we were educated on the aspects of this stadium and why it was so important to the people of Seattle. The club itself was owned by the owner of Nintendo (Which is based in Seattle along with Bill Gates Foundation, Amazon, Boeing and Microsoft to name a few of the multi Billion dollar companies) Four hot dogs and four brownies later we  were on tour around the ground. It was great to catch up with many teachers there and to have some photos with fellow PE Tweeters. It was a goal of mine before I left Australia to talk to as many other teachers as possible. I am loving just sitting down with a group of unknown teachers and introducing myself and finding out all about them.    

Rene- jumped rope world champion