Inspiring students is at least part of the reason that anyone originally decides to become a teacher right?
I’m sure you have the same hopes and dreams I do.
You know the one’s about students coming back to you one day and telling a story about how you made a big impact in their life’s trajectory.
Below are 4 things that I try to do to inspire and motivate my students to give me 100% of every minute they are in my class:
1.) Repeat Yourself Constantly
I am constantly reminding students about what’s important with common phrases and quotes that reflect my philosophy and the goals of my program. A few of my commonly used phrases are below and student’s can finish my sentences when I say these phrases:
“After All… It’s Just A Game”
This enforces good sportsmanship and reminds students that the goal of sport and play is to have fun, stay healthy and enjoy the social interaction – not just to win.
“Do Your Best… Forget the Rest”
This enforces students to strive for personal excellence and maximum effort. It reminds them that I am not as concerned with their skill level as I am with the amount of effort they put into my class.
“You Can’t Do it … YET!”
If you teach Elementary PE, then I’m sure you’ve heard your little kids say the phrase, “I Can’t Do It” about 1,000 times a week.
This has to be one of my least favorite phrases that kids say.
Luckily, I learned from one of my PE Mentors, Larry MacDonald, to take a moment anytime I hear that phrase to remind my students about adding a very powerful word to the end of that sentence … Yet!
“Take Responsibility for What You Say and Do”
This is one of the “6 Gator Goals” at my school (related to our schools mission) and reminds students that they must learn self responsibility. Owning up to your actions and the part you play in your own learning journey is a pretty huge part of my Phys Ed Program Philosophy and a personal pet peeve as well. This is one of the big ideas behind my Daily Student Self Assessment System and the Conflict Corner System that I use in my PE Classes.
After a while – these little phrases will start to be connected to sports situations in your students brains.
For example, I had a student recently tell me she was playing a soccer game and her friend was playing goalie and got scored by the other team. She told me that she remember my phrase from PE class and yelled at her friend “It’s OK – Just Do Your Best and Forget The Rest”. Now that’s a Teacher Win!
You never know the impact you can make on your students with the small things that you implement in your program.
2.) Teach Them WHY
As a student in high school, I specifically remember one of my math teachers going through each unit that we were learning over the course of the year and explaining to us WHY we were learning that content, and giving us some real world application. I really appreciated her showing us WHY we were learning what we were – and it helped me buy into the class.
We have to teach students the reasons behind the skills and activities that we’re learning in class so they understand the importance of them.
If a student asks you why it’s important to learn what you are teaching and you don’t have a really good answer – then you either need to do some serious research and become a better spokesperson for your program – or you should choose some different content that is actually useful to the student.
“Teaching to the WHY” also applies to explaining the reasons behind the rules and expectations you have in class too 🙂
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2e5-svhQxH/
3.) Lead by example
I got this one from listening to a parenting podcast where the person being interviewed challenged the listeners to ask themselves the question below:
“Is your audio matching your video?”
It’s the same idea as “practice what you preach”, but I really like the illustration of a movie or youtube video with the audio a little off. It’s the most annoying thing to watch.
As Phys Ed teachers we have to make sure that we’re setting a good example for our kids by striving for excellence in teaching and also in our own personal lives.
You can bet that your students are paying a lot more attention to your actions than they are to your words.
It’s pretty tough to ask a student to work hard for you during a lesson, if they can see that you aren’t putting any effort into teaching the class.
Think about how it looks to tell kids to value health and fitness as a lifestyle if it’s not something that you’re valuing yourself.
It’s like yelling at students to get quiet… it’s a bit of an oxymoron
4.) Teach to the Heart
Many times we teach to students brains, but I think more often we should consider teaching to their hearts. I have been trying to do this more ever since I attended a really great PD session led by Andy Vasily at the PE Institute.
The session was about using inspirational videos and stories to provoke our students emotions and get them primed to learn and give full effort in class. Basically, hooking their hearts and helping give them some perspective through amazing stories of accomplishment.
I got an idea to try out this strategy with my students when I was listening to the a PhysEd podcast put on by Jorge Rodriguez. Dr. Amanda Stanec from Move Live Learn was discussing the story of Anthony Robles.
If you haven’t heard the story you should look it up, but just to catch you up – it’s an incredible story of a young man who was born with one leg and his fight against all odds and challenges to become the NCAA National Wrestling Champion.
After reading about Anthony’s story, I had to share it with my students. I found this great video and showed it to my students so we could talk about it.
It only took a couple of minutes and sparked some great conversations with my students.
Before we watched the video I set the stage for my students. I explained that the reason I wanted them to watch this story is to realize that no matter what life throws at you, if you give 100%, don’t make excuses and take your challenges head on – then you can achieve great things.
I explained that the story was about a guy who was born with one leg and had A TON of challenges in his life that he could have used as excuses to give up on his dreams… but he didn’t – he worked hard and gave it his best – and it paid off in the end.
I think his story gives student’s a great perspective and can be used as a good teaching tool to discuss student’s developing grit, doing their best and helping to remind them to stop making excuses.
As students came to me complaining about a task being hard, or how something wasn’t fair throughout the week – I found myself asking students “do you remember the video we watched about Anthony Robles… remember how it was all about not making excuses…”
Most of the time, that question was enough to convince students to keep on trying, doing their best and stop complaining.
I hope you can use the video and this inspiring story in your teaching and find it as useful.
A Few More Thoughts
Lastly, I thought this might be a helpful clip related to some of my thoughts on this topic in the video below:
This was a guest interview I did on the Teacher Academy Podcast
- To check out the full podcast episode you can click here
- To check out our own Phys Ed Q & A Podcast click here
So to recap…
4 Ways to Motivate and Inspire Your Students
1.) Repeat Yourself Constantly
2.) Teach Them WHY
3.) Lead by example
4.) Teach to the Heart
I hope you’ll find some of these ideas helpful as I have – thanks for checking out the post.
Hope you have a great week.
Kareem West says
Great content ! ‘”Lead by example”
Marcus says
So true Kareem!
Corey says
Hi there, I would love to use this blog post as a recourse for a class I am taking but I need the date it would published. Would anyone know when this was published?
Marcus says
Hey Corey,
The blog post was published on February 21st, 2023
Let us know if you need anything else!
Junior says
Great stuff, Thanks so much for sharing!
Marcus says
You’re welcome Junior!
Glad you’re enjoying the resources!
Sophia says
This is a place where you can find information that you can trust, and understand as you observe your importance.
This information is very helpful for your visitors, which will provide a lot of good information to the visitors of your website.
Thank You
Marcus says
Thanks Sophia!
Glad you’re enjoying the resources!
Genni Lach says
I love this!
Marcus says
Yay! Genni! Glad you’re enjoying the resources!
Lorenzo says
yes! Love this approach!!
Marcus says
Thanks Lorenzo!
Glad you’re enjoying the resources!
Bridget Anne Eller says
Thank you Ben! That was a great video. I will definitely use it!
Bridget Eller
Marcus Nellems says
Hey Bridget!
Awesome I’m sure your students will appreciate it!
Danielle Warnes says
Thank you. I read this after a particularly challenging day and it made me change my perspective. I appreciate your insight.
Ben Landers says
Teaching is TOUGH! So pumped to hear that. Another edit I need to make is – don’t forget to focus on self care and filling yourself up, otherwise, you won’t have much to give your students. Have a good one!
Karen Dunfee says
I love watching you teach and the words that you use with your students. You are a great inspiration to me and I share with my colleagues so many of the ideas I have learned from watching and reading your work.
Thank you for sharing.
Karen
Ben Landers says
Hey Karen! Appreciate that feedback and really glad you’ve found it helpful. Thanks for sharing!
MOHANNAD says
ITS WAS REALLY NICE
I DO LIKEED IT
I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU WHERE CAN I FIND LESSON PLANS AND WEEKLY PLANS . I WOULD LIKE TO GET IDEAS FROM OTHER TEACHERS
THANKS SO MUCH
Ben Landers says
there are a ton of links and examples of lessons and units on our resources page
alice says
Can I request for any ideas like activities for preschool ? Thank you
Ben Landers says
With my 4 year old kids I do mostly station work, really simple activities like bouncing, throwing, catching, passing, shooting – just switch up the equipment to keep it interesting and give them really easy challenges like “can you get 3 in a row?”
Kody.B says
Hi Ben do you use these for your rules in PE or do you have your own PE rules?
Ben Landers says
These are just general principles that I use in teaching, you can check out an overview of my rules/procedures/management here: http://thepespecialist.com/hacks
Trixie says
Thank you so much for sharing this information. I will use this year the Assessment, Conflict Corner and The Good sportsmanship Code. Thank you so much for sharing your ideas. God Bless you.
Mary says
I absolutely love your blog and the ideas that you share! I get excited every time I see you pop up in my inbox 🙂
Thank you!
Ben Landers says
Thanks Mary, you just made my day. I’m glad you’re enjoying it – thanks for reading!
Mehmet Kadir Akbulut says
Good way. Thanks.
Sara Wood says
I used Zach Hodskins (Florida basketball player with one arm) as a provocation this year. The kids really connected to it. I will look into Anthony’s story. Thanks!
Ben Landers says
I just looked up his story – thanks for the comment, we’re doing basketball now and I will definitely be using that one as well.