Introducing Students to New Lifetime Sports in a Mobile PE Class

Let me introduce myself. My name is Casey Page and I am a physical education teacher in Shelby County, Kentucky, which is a suburb of Louisville. I also coach golf and am an assistant athletic director at our school, but I have always thought of myself as a teacher first.

In March 2024, I was lucky enough to be named the 2024 SHAPE America National High School Physical Education Teacher of the Year! In my award application, I wrote about introducing students to new lifetime activities in my, what I think is unique, advanced PE class. I’ll share some of those details in this article, and maybe you’ll find a few ideas for sharing lifetime sports with your students.

A Different Type of PE Class

This is my 13th year of teaching physical education, but I have also taught other subjects along the way, such as health, wellness and weightlifting. During my first six years of teaching, I used the same health and PE curriculum that I was taught during my college years, but I felt like there was so much more we could do to really prepare students for an active life.

It wasn’t until my seventh year of teaching that my incredible principal, Margo Whisman, approached me and asked if we could create a different type of PE class — one that students didn’t take just because they had a hole in their schedule, but one that was a destination class.

That’s when the wheels started turning and the idea of advanced PE came to life. We started piecing together the idea of a mobile PE class that would focus on lifetime sports. It would also feature superlong units to allow students time to actually practice and perfect their new skills, since the end goal was to have students playing lifetime sports for, you know, a lifetime. It was going to be a lot of work, but as teachers know, our students are worth it — and we do it all for them.

Preparing to Teach Lifetime Sports

Figuring out the “mobile” part of our mobile classroom was the trickiest part at first, and we realized the only long-term solution was for me to get my commercial driver’s license (CDL) so I could be the driver of what would be our “Magic School Bus.”

I don’t want to overplay it, but I can tell you it wasn’t easy to get that license. First of all, I have an amazing district bus department that was able to work with me during my planning periods to get the process going. After around 40 hours of bus driver training with an instructor, countless hours of picking up and dropping off fake students, four CDL tests, a driver’s test with a state trooper on the bus that included parallel parking, random drug tests, yearly physicals, and an annual eight-hour update, I was a certified bus driver.

It was a lot of work, but in the end it was worth it because it opened so many doors for my class.

Use Local Parks and Facilities

Having my CDL license allows me to teach lifetime sports in a variety of locations away from school grounds. This plays out in several ways. First, there are several activities we can do just during a student’s normal class period. During our disc golf unit, we hop on a bus and drive to the disc golf course down the road.

As a PE teacher, you already know the gym gets stolen from you all the time. Having a bus provides me the flexibility to take students places when that happens. For example, the other day we got kicked out of the gym for a blood drive, so we drove to the local park during each period and did a short hike around a lake.

Learning New Lifetime Sports

Probably the students’ favorite part of the advanced PE class is that about once a month, we venture out for a trip that is either further away or takes longer to do. On these days, we do a half-day or full-day trip.

Here are some of the lifetime sports my students get to try as part of my advanced PE class:

• Rock Climbing: The first trip we go on every year is rock climbing at a huge indoor climbing gym in Lexington, KY, just down the road from one of the top 10 places to rock climb in the world.
• Disc Golf: At the end of our disc golf unit, we go to a larger disc golf course to play 18 holes. It’s awesome to see students notice the difference between the smaller course we typically play at and a larger one.
• Hiking: We tie the next trip into the first one, as we go to the area where the world’s top rock climbing takes place, but our main purpose is hiking. We hike a challenging trail to one of the larger natural bridges in the U.S., where we get to eat lunch and walk across.
• Ice Skating: Next, we take a trip to an indoor ice skating facility to teach the students how to ice skate.
• Skiing: After the new year, I drive students to a different state to go skiing, which includes lessons for them to improve.
• Swimming: Last year we weren’t able to do this, but I typically follow up with a swimming trip. No student should ever graduate high school without knowing how to swim. During the swimming trip, we also do water rescue and learn how to kayak, which builds up to a later trip.
• Bowling: We do a typical bowling trip, but we focus on cues for success.
• Golf: We go to Topgolf to learn one of the best lifetime sports around.
• Fishing: Last year, after getting inspired by Ami Schulte’s presentation at the SHAPE America National Convention & Expo, I added a fishing field trip. We fished, did knot tying, learned how to build a campfire, and even filleted fish that students caught — then let them try cooking the fish over the campfire they built.
• Canoeing/Kayaking: Our final big trip of the year is our canoeing/kayaking trip down a river.

I hear jokes sometimes about how easy my job is and how I just go on these awesome field trips all the time, but as many teachers know, it takes a lot of work to plan and oversee field trips. If you go into this thinking this will be a great way for you to get out of school and do these activities, you’re wrong.

Students will need help while attempting the skills necessary to participate in and enjoy these sports and activities — and it will be up to you to help them (or risk discouraging them from trying again on their own time). That said, it’s all worth it.

Longer Units for the Win

In addition to creating a mobile PE classroom, I wanted to fundamentally change the way I taught physical education to ensure students got the concepts that I was trying to teach them. Without this understanding, they wouldn’t continue the activities after they left my class. Lifetime sports, remember?

In my opinion, there are two rules of thought regarding the length of a PE unit. The first is the most common and is based on exposure to many sports using quick one- to two-week units to see if something sticks. The second is to lengthen the units to allow a more in-depth understanding of the skills and concepts.

When I was teaching quick units, I noticed that it was mainly my athletes who were enjoying this. I also noticed that my middle-of-the-road and non-athlete students didn’t have enough time to progress in each sport. It might even have the opposite effect, turning some of them away from these sports forever — the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do.

So, I switched how I was doing things. I decided to stretch the units out — like, way out. I’m talking about a month-and-a-half to two months per unit. I determined that the best way to continue the learning in these lengthened units was to make them super technical. I can tell you that during this process, there’s always a point in the unit where I start feeling like I need to move on, but I dig in and hold on. You won’t believe what happens: The late growth afterward is incredible.

Students start settling into the concepts and are able to apply them as the sport slows down for them. I hesitate to even talk about this because I fear some teachers will abuse it. I think some might see this as an opportunity to teach a few lessons in a unit and then sit back and do nothing for a month or two. If you’re looking for an easy way out of teaching, this isn’t it. It won’t work. Students will start getting bored, and you’ll see behavior issues popping up.

You have to figure out a way to make the whole process about learning, and you as the teacher will have to become an expert on the skills to facilitate that. We get super technical in my class, and the fun part is that after a while, everyone starts seeing the results. That leads to more enjoyment of the sports, and the students start asking questions to get even more technical. This truly helps build a culture of learning in my classes.

Here is some evidence of how well this works: The boys from my class have gone on to win the Kentucky Disc Golf State Championship for the past three years, and this year the girls also won. We are competing against other schools who are entirely made up of disc golf clubs, which we don’t have. The tennis team is almost entirely made up of students from my class. I almost can’t play pickleball in my county without running into students from my class. I know if I did shorter units, this would not be the case.

Shared Experiences Create a Positive Class Culture

Equity is a hot topic in education right now, and I truly believe that I teach one of the most equitable classes around. I take students to do things they never would have had a chance to try. I don’t teach in a private school. I teach at a school where about 50% of the student population is considered “disadvantaged.”

With the help of several different avenues (especially my family youth service coordinator, Christina Olsson), I always have funding, so no student misses a trip because they can’t afford it. I think this also leads to a positive class culture. These students appreciate me not only for how I teach, but also for the experiences I provide for them.

It’s such a joy to have students reach out to me later in life and tell me about the ski trip they took with their friends, or how they just went kayaking down a river out west, or how they went rock climbing outdoors for the first time. (I have received all these messages in the past year.)

Small Steps Can Make a Big Difference

I know trying new things is scary, and many teachers may not have the ability to get their CDL. But if you want to make smaller changes, here are three things to try:

• Take your students on a field trip that ties up a unit, or just to spark a lifetime habit.
• Start teaching lifetime sports that are more affordable.
• Try extending the length of your units so all students can become proficient at the skills and activities.

In the end, the effort is worth it, because we do it for them!

Additional Resources

• National Physical Education Standards
• National Physical Education Standards Educator Kit
• Fishin’ for Change: Combining Physical Education and Outdoor Recreation

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