August 5, 2024
By Meag Campos, Project Manager
Listen to this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast to hear from Julita Geer, a long-time educator in Louisiana, who has spent the last nine years as a physical education teacher. She shares the valuable lessons students learn while playing and watching the Olympics.
As Aleta noted in last week’s Hooray For Monday, the focus on test scores and grades in our classrooms can often crowd out the other things we want our students to learn — including the very important social skills that come through play.
I recently spoke with Julita Geer, a long-time educator in Louisiana who has spent the last nine years as a physical education teacher. After more than two decades in ELA, Julita transitioned to phys-ed because she felt first-hand the growing pressure of testing and believed that students were missing out on vital life lessons, especially as technology increasingly takes up free time.
“That playground negotiation, the group dynamics, how to read body language, those nonverbal cues — I feel like it’s social skills that [students] are going to need for middle school, for high school, for democratic society. ‘These are the decisions we’ve made, the rules we’re going to play by. We’re going to accept the outcome whether I win or whether I lose.’”
As we enjoy watching the astounding levels of athleticism on display at the Olympics and keep our eyes on the ever-changing electoral landscape ahead of this November’s election, the insight Julita shares about the power of play — or even just lying down and watching the clouds — is a wonderful reminder that touching grass can be an education in itself.
You can hear my conversation with Julita in this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast episode!
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Hooray For Monday is an award-winning weekly publication by Center for Inspired Teaching, an independent nonprofit organization that invests in and supports teachers. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Our mission is to create radical change in the school experience – away from compliance and toward authentic engagement.
