![]() ![]() “So when they’re able to come to PE and push in their chair and stand up and move for the whole 30 minutes, that’s so valuable.” “These kids are literally sitting in front of their screens all day,” Bedient said. Rhianna Bedient, a health and fitness teacher at Whittier Elementary in Tacoma, said she feels her job is even more important now than prior to COVID-19 as students are learning how to keep healthy during a pandemic. Last year, I didn’t hear from very many kids at all. “It’s not full attendance, but it’s a lot more than I had last year. “It doesn’t matter whether they’re a kindergarten teacher, PE, high school English - they are working so hard to make sure that the kids are cared for, that they are receiving the content that they need so that they’re not going to fall behind.” “Our teachers are working so hard,” Waterbly said. The district offered technical support and options for lessons, but, Waterbly said, the teachers really took it upon themselves to come up with creative ideas. “And for specialists like PE and music, I think it was maybe a little bit more difficult because we didn’t have the structure set up at that time to be able to reach all the kids.” “It was just ‘All right, you’re going virtual,’ and we had to try to come up with stuff on the fly,” Wood said. There wasn’t much of a game plan, Wood said. “We worried if there’s too much screen time, it’s not healthy for them,” Waterbly said. The move to virtual teaching back in the spring was tough.Īt first, the primary goal was to keep kids moving, said Mary Waterbly, instructional facilitator for Tacoma Public Schools. “I think the more you can make exercise a game and fun for them, I think it makes them want to come back more.” GETTING STUDENTS INVOLVED “What I’m seeing with the kids to get more interaction is they really respond to video games and cartoons and other things that they recognize,” Wood said. Wood says the videos help to get students engaged online. “As I figure out what I’m doing, the process speeds up a little bit, but it’s still not quick,” he said. The videos range from 3 to 10 minutes and can take Wood 20 hours to make. Two of Wood’s sons, a seventh-grader and a fourth-grader in the Tacoma School District, pitch in on ideas. In “Space Jump,” they try to avoid asteroids and aliens and interact with familiar monster characters in “Pumpkin Smash!” In “Turkey Trot,” students run in place while leaping over animated turkeys. In “Jurassic Parkour,” students make a run for it from dinosaurs. Now, Wood has created eight videos using animations, even dressing up to play the part. And I just started kind of going from there,” Wood said. “I ended up making my own homemade green screen with PVC pipes from McLendon (Hardware) and sheets that I bought at JOANN Fabrics. What began as teaching stretches via screen turned into full-on animated videos as Wood became more familiar with creating content through iMovie and PowerPoint. “Through that process, starting to make the lessons, I was finding that I couldn’t find all the things online that I wanted to be able to present,” said Wood, 45. ![]()
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