One year after COVID canceled the annual conference of the Illinois Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (IAHPERD), members were more than eager to gather again Dec. 2 and 3.
That includes students and faculty from the NIU Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, who traditionally hold a strong presence among their peers.
“It was a really good weekend for our program,” says Jim Ressler, associate professor and director of Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE).
“We brought some students – like we always do. We were able to interact with alumni. Many of my colleagues presented with current or former students. Our KNPE Majors club, which is advised by Gail Koehling, led a session – as they do every year.”
Club members on the trip to Tinley Park were Jarred Carlson, Janet Cruz, Grace Desmedt, Daniel Dugan, Allison Graham, Alicia Hrvatin, Jacob Nations, Benjamin Volkening, Karli Waltrip and Lisa Warjowski.
Among Ressler’s departmental colleagues at the conference was Paul Wright, NIU’s EC Lane and MN Zimmerman Endowed Professor, who received the 2022 IAHPERD Scholar Award.
Shauna Havener, Tori Shiver, Zach Wahl-Alexander and Laurie Zittel also were there, allowing them to network with colleagues and alumni and to market their department’s graduate degrees.
Kelly Zerby, meanwhile, who teaches physical education at Jefferson Elementary School in DeKalb and is a three-time NIU alumna, was named Elementary P.E. Teacher of the Year. Zerby also will lead IAHPERD next year as president.
Ressler is proud of NIU’s legacy of participation in IAHPERD, including the work of retired KNPE faculty members Clersida and Luis Garcia and Connie Fox, all of whom held leadership positions with the organization.
He also appreciates the opportunity IAHPERD presents him and his fellow faculty to model for students the responsibilities of professionalism: In recent years, he said, Koehling, Jenny Parker and other members of the PETE team have encouraged student involvement and leadership at the state level.
“Our current team is following in the footsteps of those NIU faculty and colleagues who came before us, and we feel the same way as they did. We are very much behind all advocacy efforts to make sure that quality physical education instruction in prioritized in K-12 schools that services are available for students of all abilities and backgrounds,” Ressler says.
“We then promote the importance of advocacy at the state level to our students. We gently nudge them to get involved and to know what it means to be an engaged volunteer,” he adds. “Hopefully, our students feel like we walk the talk.”
FOR GRAHAM, A SENIOR Physical Education major from Batavia, IAHPERD checks all of her boxes: She will graduate in December with minors in Health Education and Dance Performance.
Graham presented as part of the KNPE Majors Club and, thanks to an opportunity offered by Shiver, on her own.
Shiver, a visiting assistant professor, assigned her students last spring to write about physical activity games that would work well in P.E. curriculum.
“My presentation was called ‘The Integration of Ballet Techniques into Movement in Sports.’ I chose dance, and there are not really any games for dance, so I ended up creating six or eight or my own,” Graham says. “Dr. Shiver loved my games and asked if I wanted to present them, so I picked my best ideas, and we picked an age group.”
Drawing on her past experiences with dance – lessons started at age 3, competitions at age 5 and three years (two as captain) of her Plainfield North High School Dance Team – Graham viewed those artistry skills “through a P.E. lens” to reach children who might turn up their noses at something like ballet.
“Ballet can be super boring. Not everyone likes classical music. Not everyone just wants to stand there and extend their foot,” she says. “In my head, I was like, ‘What if we combined dance elements with other sport elements?’ So I created activities.”
Graham’s hour-long presentation, which included plenty of opportunities for people to stand up and try the games and 10 minutes for questions and answers at the end, featured five activities as well as videos and equipment that she created herself.
Among them was a tendu, “a simple ballet move that is essentially just extending your foot in front of your body. I made it into a soccer game so that we were working on both tendus and ball-handling skills. You were trying to aim the ball through the goal while working on your tendu.”
Her video showed visual prompts for students.
“If I throw a rock, that means you have to hold a plié,” she says. “If I throw some glitter into the air, that means you can stay up from your plié position.”
P.E. teachers liked what they saw, she says.
“Ballet is one of the only forms of physical activity that helps improve four of the six skill-related fitness components required by the State of Illinois that are federally mandated as well: In any activity that a P.E. teacher has students do, we have to integrate these,” she says. “It works balance, coordination, agility and power. It also works on flexibility and muscular strength, which are two different components of fitness, so it gives you a full-body workout that also improves your fitness skills.”
She enjoyed the experience of attending and presenting at the conference – and, as NIU’s SHAPE America Major of the Year for 2021-22, will accompany her professors in New Orleans for the organization’s annual National Convention and Expo in late April.
Adding that prestigious honor (“When I found out, I cried. I just feel so blessed,” she says) to her résumé along with her presentation on “The Integration of Ballet Techniques into Movement in Sports” gives her confidence for her entry into the job market next January.
“This whole concept of combining ballet with physical education is something that really isn’t being done, so I think it gives me a little edge over people when it comes to the interviewing process and getting hired,” she says. “I have a different outlook on P.E., and when I do get into a classroom, my classroom will be very different, very unique and very personalized.”
Graham also has discovered “that I love public speaking, which is kind of crazy.”
“I went in super nervous, but I didn’t have this really high bar set for myself, because this was my first time. I was like, ‘OK, if I goof up a little bit, I’ll recover,’ ” she says.
“But it went so well that when I was done, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I loved this! I loved speaking and sharing ideas.’ And it made me already have ideas for next year’s presentation. I would love to do another one if I got the opportunity, and to continue presenting into my teaching career as well.”
GAIL KOEHLING ALWAYS HEARS the same comments from KPNE Majors Club members after each year’s IAHPERD conference.
I’m so glad that I did this. Thank you for asking me. I want to be involved next year. When I’m a teacher, I want to come up with ideas and be a presenter.
“This is all valuable professional development for them,” says Koehling, an instructor who has advised the club for about eight years.
“When I have a to teach students, I always feel pretty confident. But when I have to go in and have a conversation, or present to my colleagues, it’s a different kind of anxiety level,” she adds. “That’s what they’re doing. They’re learning that. And, hopefully, they’re getting through that, and they’re excited to share their new ideas and want to do this when they become teachers.”
Jitters are natural and welcome, she says.
“One of them came to me and said, ‘I’m still nervous,’ and I said, ‘That’s great, because when you’re nervous, that means you care,’ ” she says. “When you go into something, and you aren’t nervous, and you’re not thinking about what you’re doing, maybe you don’t care enough. I said, ‘Being nervous is good,’ and she said, ‘OK. I feel better.’ ”
Preparations for each year’s December conference start in January or February, beginning with ideas of what to present and followed later in the spring with the development and submission of proposals to IAHPERD.
Acceptance – or not – arrives in the summer.
During the fall semester, the presentation truly takes shape as Koehling and club members map out on a dry-erase board just what games they will demonstrate, in what order and what other visuals (such as PowerPoint) they will use.
Koehling’s students also determine the critical behind-the-scenes mechanics such as who will set up the equipment, who will tear it down and when “so that we can get a lot done in a short amount of time” on the IAHPERD stage.
Three evening-hours rehearsals in an Anderson Hall gymnasium are required.
“All of this becomes coordinated during our practices, and that’s why practices are mandatory,” Koehling says. “You have to be there so that everybody knows what they’re doing. It’s kind of like a musical.”
Members of NIU’s audience in Tinley Park took a trip around the world, the itinerary of which adapted games from other countries to middle school P.E. classes.
An African dance. A Mexican dance with clapping and swimming pool noodles instead of drumsticks. A billiards game from England with pool noodles instead of wooden cues, red rubber balls and hula hoops for pockets. A Native American game assimilating hockey with pool noodles instead of branches and rubber balls instead of acorns or pine cones.
During a Brazilian “rooster” game mimicking tag and flag football, students hopped on one leg with their right hands on their shoulders while trying to pull off the “flags” their competitors wore.
Koehling bounced around as a rooster herself during the game so that her licensure candidates would see the teaching-and-learning benefits of playing alongside their future students. She also made sure that her students came up with modifications for each activity, such as galloping instead of hopping or doing jumping jacks to earn back flags.
Students also were challenged to offer alternative ways to deliver the same curriculum with recommendations for different equipment or rules and asked to provide suggestions for ways to incorporate information on history and culture that reinforces Common Core standards.
Beyond the academic benefits, Koehling says, are the practical: KNPE Majors Club members who present at IAHPERD can highlight that on their résumés and, even better, market themselves for employment while meeting NIU alumni who just might have jobs to offer.
Those who are about to graduate often announce their availability when the microphone is still in their hands, she says: I’m a free agent! I don’t have a job yet!
“Students who have graduated from our program look forward to coming to our KNPE Majors Club presentation. It’s like a reunion of sorts of our graduates who are now out teaching,” Koehling says, “and I love hearing the comment from our grads: Oh, that was a great idea. How did you come up with that? I can’t wait to try that game in my class when I get back Monday.”
