Like many who enter the exercise field, Jordyn McFarlane was a three-sport athlete in high school.
The St. Charles North graduate who’d played golf, hockey and lacrosse went on to play lacrosse at North Central College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science in 2017.
Yet McFarlane longed for a different path.
“I am so excited to teach Physical Education and Health and then to coach as well,” says McFarlane, who is earning her M.S.Ed. in Kinesiology and Physical Education and her initial licensure at NIU.
“Sports can be such a great way to show students and kids that, through friendship, relationship-building and goal-setting, you can kind of achieve anything you set your mind to with the right mindset and the right tools to do so,” she says. “I think that just being able to help kids – to be that voice, or that person, there for students and kids when times are tough and when times are great, and to hopefully change the life of at least one student – is beneficial.”
McFarlane got a head-start on her future career Feb. 16 during the P.E. Leadership Summit.
Working with students from West Aurora High School, she joined her NIU Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education classmates and faculty in delivering and participating in activities meant to inspire and equip leaders in the gym and in life.
Developed and launched in 2019 by Jim Ressler, associate professor of Physical Education Teacher Education, the purpose of the summits is to bring select high school students to the NIU campus for professional development in leadership concepts.
Each edition empowers high school students with the knowledge to identify positive behaviors such as decision-making, accountability, honesty, integrity, fairness, equity, and then to demonstrate those in their schools, homes, social circles and communities.
Ressler’s reason for including students from his KNPE 365: Introduction to Adventure Education course and Tori Shiver’s KNPE 447: Methods of Secondary Physical Education course is simple.
“Access,” Ressler says, “and direct experience with students this age prior to a more immersive clinical experience with the same age of students but in different communities within our service region. It is absolutely intentional, knowing that we wanted some student involvement and also knowing that this is low stakes. This is our home turf. These are spaces where they’re comfortable.”
For Shiver, a visiting assistant professor, the first glimpse of what Ressler routinely accomplishes during his summits was “phenomenal.”
Her students not only watched Ressler modeling the pedagogy but also saw its outcomes.
“We’ve been talking about social-emotional learning – the affective domain – and being able to create positive relationships in the classroom, but we haven’t had that application with this older age group,” Shiver says.
“We can peer-teach and talk about stuff as much as we possibly can in the classroom setting, but until we actually get to practice it, they’re not going to conceptualize it,” she adds. “It’s like that moment where it clicks for them. They get to see it happening. They come back to the classroom and they can say, ‘Oh, yeah, I did XYZ,’ instead of, ‘Our book says to do XYZ.’ They’re actually able to apply it, and that came through when we re-met. That’s exciting.”
ACTIVITIES ON THE AGENDA for both days – students from Downers Grove North and Geneva high schools traveled Feb. 23 to Anderson Hall – integrated several growth-and-development concepts within the fun.
Listening. Differences and commonalities. Community-building. Inclusivity. Asking for help. Perception. Awareness. Identity. Comfort and discomfort. Risk. Personality.
During one game, for example, Ressler asked the students to cluster together based on their mutual fears or mutual indifference.
Spiders. Roller coasters. Introducing yourself to someone who you don’t know. Telling someone that you love them. Trying a new food. Traveling to a new place or a big city. Dancing in public.
Comforting a friend in need of help. Asking for help when you don’t have the answer.
The teens also toured and ate lunch at New Hall, where they were in the audience for a panel discussion of current Huskies talking about college.
Physical Education major Steven McDermott, who will graduate in December, enjoyed the assignment and its confirmation of his “purpose.”
McDermott, the father of a 13-year-old son and daughters ages 7 and 8, left his decade-long career in security at Rockford’s SwedishAmerican Hospital to enroll at NIU.
“For me, this was a good experience with high-schoolers. Not having taught before, I have limited experience with this age group,” McDermott says. “Being able to see how a more experienced professor navigates this space, and also how the kids interact with the material, is going to be beneficial for me to implement as I think about become a teacher in the future.”
He hopes to “build as many relationships with as many kids as I can” as an educator, and believes that the training ground of the P.E. Leadership Summit will facilitate that ambition.
Its lessons also give him a playbook for his own career that will benefit society and perpetuate Ressler’s vision.
“It’s good to create leaders, not just in P.E. but in general. Some of these kids today are talking about how it’s impacted them already, and I’m excited to see their future because the world needs more leaders,” McDermott says. “I’m a little biased because I want more good people in education – more good people in schools – so, hopefully through these interactions, they can see not only how fun some of these activities are but it will push them toward education.”
Dan Dugan, a senior P.E. major from Western Springs, also will graduate in December.
Prior to COVID-19, Dugan “worked in a before-and-after-school program and discovered how rewarding it is working with young people – and needed to turn that into a career.”
“Originally, I was Early Childhood,” he says, “and then the pandemic hit. In staying active, and seeing what that did for me, I realized that a lot of my passion for sport was more my deal, and that I really like working with a big age range. With P.E., I can work with K-8 in the same day.”
He appreciated the opportunity to interact with the West Aurora students and the curriculum on leadership.
“It’s important that we learn how to get along with students and know that that actually looks like. In secondary, it’s really important that we don’t treat them like kids but that we treat them like equals – that we give them that responsibility to show us what they can do instead of limiting them,” Dugan says.
“At that age in particular, students really give a lot of attention to what it is that their peers are doing,” he adds. “A lot of times, students would rather hear from a fellow student than a teacher, so by giving them the responsibility to help us run the class, we do that.”
RESSLER IS CONFIDENT THAT what he modeled during the summits will prove meaningful in what the P.E. majors will “experience later in the spring in secondary clinicals and certainly in their student-teaching this fall.”
“We are very deliberate about teaching effective teaching strategies in our program,” he says, “but we use different language as a teacher than as a facilitator. As a facilitator, you are inviting participants to learn. You are leading through invitation.”
For the visitors in the gym those mornings, it was an invitation to develop a life skill.
For the Huskies in the gym, however, each invitation doubled as pedagogy – with an unspoken question following each direction: You see what I just did there?
“I wanted you to stay on your feet. I wanted you to stay in a circle formation. I wanted you to mix with other people,” Ressler says, “and I asked these questions in order to keep this thread going because I wanted you to be uncomfortable.”
Discomfort is a necessary ingredient in achieving goals, he says. What lies between security and panic is “the growth space.”
“That’s where we stretch,” he says.
“Stretching might mean grabbing the index card and asking an open-ended question to a high-schooler you just met. Or that stretch might be just being in the circle altogether: ‘I wasn’t comfortable enough to take the piece of paper, but I was comfortable enough to stand next to someone I don’t know,’ ” he adds. “Or it could be just being in the room altogether and saying, ‘Wow, this is a lot for me right now.’ ”
But, Ressler says, participating in the summits on the “home turf” of Anderson Hall with the presence of NIU classmates in the same situation fosters assurance for clinical experiences on their own.
“They can say, ‘Now I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad I got to have that hiccup or that sort of feeling rather than having it for the first time a month from now when I’m actually at the school I’m supposed to work in and I’m shellshocked,’ ” he says.
“We like to think that teacher-preparation is so much more than just showing up to your assigned placement,” he adds. “Of course, we want them to be really well skilled and highly prepared teachers – but some of this peripheral stuff can carry as much or even more meaning into our overall development.”
Shiver observed just that in her students.
“They were on the periphery when they walked in, and as the activities started, they started to integrate,” she says.
“By the end, most of our students weren’t cliquing together. They were separated. They were meeting with high school students, having those one-on-one conversations, all the way through the time when we went to lunch. They were truly getting to know them in way that was like, ‘Oh, that kid’s hopes and dreams are X, Y and Z, and I hope they’re able to achieve those,’ ” she adds.
“They dove right in, and I think that it’s powerful for that moment and for that day, but it’s also promising for what they’re going to be able to do as teachers.”
McFarlane felt the power.
She saw the high-schoolers on a journey of “self-discovery” as they chose “how much they want to give” and “surprising themselves on how much they actually ended up giving.”
“I learned a lot about myself, too, and how one word or one experience with an individual or adult can change your day – and change their day,” McFarlane says. “The same goes for teaching: It just shows the purposefulness behind the delivery of instruction. You make that one moment with a student, and it can change their life and yours.”
Through teaching, she adds, “I’m just learning that you’ve got to put a smile on, and the more you give, the more they take – and the more they give back to you.”
Positive peer example and peer influence advance that mission, she says, confirming Ressler’s intent.
“I hope the students realize that the connections they make with adults, with people on the streets, with other students in their classrooms – these are relationship strategies that they are going to use for the rest of their lives, no matter the scenario,” McFarlane says, “and I hope they realize that they can have an impact on one person’s day, maybe without knowing or having to try that hard.”
