Physical Education in the New Norm

What about PE in the new normal? Curriculum execution has been transformed, from face-to-face execution of performances to online checking and evaluation. All educators now could relate to the journey of responding to education during the pandemic. It is a lot of thinking of techniques and strategies on how to teach skills online, and studying different applications and platforms to be used. In addition to upskilling through attending right and left webinars to enhance handling students online. A lot of effort to ensure that educators can achieve the goals and objectives of DepEd so that no students will be left behind. It is expected that we, as a teacher, can be the bridge in using the different Learning Distance Modalities with the use of the computer, cell phones, tablets, radios, and other gadgets to sustain learning even in the remote
areas.

Before the pandemic what we only need is a whistle and our command for the students to execute skills. With this new normal we need to create an instructional video focusing on the different skills that we need to transfer to the students. PE teachers must learn and be trained on how to edit video which takes time and effort to make even a single minute. If ever we fail to create one, what we need is a vast physical space and
materials (sports) where we can show the proper execution of the basic skills in sports, wellness, and dance. Aside from physical space, it is also important to have a good camera, laptop, or personal computer that can show through the execution of the said skills. And the most essential requirement from the teachers to continually perform all the planned activities is a strong internet connection, which we experience that we do not always have.

But still, the government particularly in Quezon City continuously updates the gadgets given to the students, and even the internet load that until now is renewing. The last thing that we can do to have a complete set of presentations for students is to search instructional videos that are already available on the internet. PE teachers must carefully select the presentation available on the net because not all available videos are suitable and correct, we must consider the text used, execution, and settings. We must also consider the video length. Usually, teachers choose a short time presentation without sacrificing quality because we still need to consider the internet load used by the students. Moreover, mental health and psychological safety are important aspects that should be considered. Because not all plans are applicable to all students considering all the problems they encounter like food, (due to parents who are jobless because of the pandemic), actual on-camera demonstration where we cannot force students to open their cameras since not all of them are confident to show the inside of their humble homes.

With the experience since last year in handling PE classes online, we rapidly accept that not all students can pay attention 100 percent with the multi-tasking that they can do while facing the gadgets. We usually include prayer and “kumustahan” in the routine before going directly to the main lesson. It is during discussion we make the lesson alive with a sense of humor.

At the end of the lesson, we do usually thank and appreciate the students in attending and participating in class by saying some encouragement. Being a PE teacher during online distance learning we learned how to be an actress, we need to be more beautiful and more presentable where my eyes, my mouth, and my chicks must be more expressive to get and sustain students’ attention. In a PE class as part of their performance task instead of having a group work with their classmate, it will now be a performance task including their family members or sometimes their neighbors. The pandemic has transformed education and all in it. We all learn and level up. Education is continuous progress. PE will never be the same even post-pandemic.