The Meaningful Podcast Experience (MPE)

Ep. 6 - From Asia to Africa: MPE Across Contexts w/ Leti Cariño

• Ty and Doug • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Episode SIX introduces Leticia Cariño, an Elementary (PYP) Physical Educator in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. In this episode, we discuss opportunities and challenges related to implementation and how the way we implement MPE is contextual. Leti shares several reflective strategies she uses with her learners and how she uses those reflections to shape her instruction to meet her student's needs. 

Leticia Cariño is a passionate physical educator from Spain, dedicated to promoting health and well-being among her students. Currently, she teaches Physical Education (PE) in the Primary Years Programme (PYP) at the International Community School of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Previously, Leti spent 7 years at an international school in Cambodia where she first became interested in the ideas of the Meaningful Physical Education framework. Leti shares her ideas on her blog Inspired by Movement to see examples of the way Leti applies the framework as discussed in the episode, check out a few of her blog posts linked below. 

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Re: "Fan Mail" 

Thanks to Isaiah Gleddie for the guitar pieces, SSHRC for some funding and our guests for sharing!

Ty Riddick:

Music. Welcome back to the meaningful podcast experience before we get the conversation started with today's guest, I want to take a minute to respond to our fan mail. Unfortunately, Doug nor I can respond directly via Buzzsprout, but this individual from Northbrook, Illinois, was curious about reflective strategies and tools. After listening to Andy and magars episode. In the show notes for this episode, I have linked a Google Doc that has a curated list of democratic and reflective strategies that I've compiled by essentially creeping Twitter or x. If you take a look at the doc and see something you'd like to add, feel free to shoot me an email at riddick@ualberta.ca And now on with the show.

Leti Cariño:

Hi, thanks for having me. Ty you say perfectly. Leti Cariño. Thank you. So I'm I have been working in Abidjan in Ivory Coast for six months. I started hearing in August, and prior to that, I was in Cambodia for seven years in the International School of Phnom Penh. And that's when I started doing meaningful PE framework and trying to adapt it and try things with the meaningful PE framework, I want to say was like 2021 when I was learning more about that during COVID times, and 2022 is when I just, like, started rolling and trying and doing things before that, I actually, I was also teaching for many years, but I didn't do the meaningful PE, yeah,

Ty Riddick:

I saw, I creeped you on LinkedIn before this, before the podcast, and saw how much teaching experience you had, which is a lot. So why in 2021 2022 why bother with the meaningful phys ed framework? So what was a Was there something about it that just kind of resonated with your philosophy? Or, how did you decide that this was something worth pursuing?

Leti Cariño:

Oh, both, actually. So I listened to a podcast I was trying to find which one, but it was definitely, uh, one of the first meaningful PE ones that I heard ever with Deirdre and Tim Fletcher and Dag and they were talking about meaningful PE, and really resonated with me, like all these ideas the feature they were the features they were talking about, how challenges, how to Have the kids interacting with each other, and how important was, like, it was relevant for them, the motor competence, everything was like, kind of, well, actually, we do some of these things, but we're not so intentional about it. And so then I read the book that summer. I bought the book, and then I was just like, so into it. I thought this, this is it. This is like, so interesting for us to actually start doing it. And then we, we actually Jorge Rodriguez just asked a few of us to do book study. And so we did podcast of book study. So it was really meaningful, relevant, interesting for us, because we had to read every chapter again and think about it and discuss and so we came with all these ideas. And every time we did that, I always got a bit nervous, and then I finished, like, super energized with all the things that we came up with. So that was kind of the beginning, and with I was looking at it, it was like, we started in in August and in February. We're still talking about the book study. So it was really long, and it was amazing. Yeah,

Ty Riddick:

it's funny. I've recently just been preparing for another guest is reading the book again, and it's funny how many times you read it and go back to it, you pick up different things, kind of every time. So as you said, meaningful is that it's a big thing. So you started with this in Cambodia. And so I'm curious, kind of, what was your your first steps? Or how did you approach it, or where did you start with with your students?

Leti Cariño:

I thought of the challenge as a way of starting it, and we were doing this unit of individual pursuits, athletics, and I just recently saw a. A post of Andy Vasili, who was like, talking about the judge rate challenge. And I thought, well, this is perfect, because we are actually doing a goal setting for these units, and they're going to think of how they can improve. How can they challenge themselves? And so I decided to make a chart of all the events that we were doing, and I wanted to be more to have them be more accountable with this visual learning. And so I think I got this idea from you actually, Ty of the stickers. So see, it's just like finding, finding resources here and there, right? And so just getting inspired from ones and the others. And so I had this visual with, what is your like jazz, right challenge, and choose an event. And so they would just like, if everything was like jazz, right challenge, they would put a green sticker. And if it was like too easy, they'll go to a yellow one, and it was too hard, they'll put the red one. And I had, like, the numbers with the with the names of the kids, so I would know who did what, and they didn't have to know each other.

Ty Riddick:

Awesome. And so were there feet in, in staying with this Cambodian context, were there features or pedagogies that you thought really went well for you, that you found that you relied on okay more often than not, or ones that really resonated with your kids.

Leti Cariño:

It depended, it depends on the on the units. So challenge was there for sure, fun was also there. Social interaction was also there. So I think it depending on on how much intention you want to put into the features. And when we did the bike unit or cycling unit, we also had, again, the challenge. We had the motor competence. And I let the kids also choose which which of the features are you finding more relevant in this unit. And so they will also talk about it, because reflection is a big part of what we do and we share.

Ty Riddick:

And so, as you said in your introduction, you make a big move. We're leaving Cambodia, we're flying all the way to abijan and the Ivory Coast. New setting, new context. Or if you could just tell us a little bit about how that Cambodian context is a little bit different than your context currently in the Ivory Coast, and kind of where are you starting with this new group of kids that you have?

Leti Cariño:

So I have to say, when I started doing meaningful being Cambodia, I was already working there for a few years. So I knew the students, I knew the teachers, I knew the running assistants or teacher assistants. So that was already easy for me. Here I come to a new place and I know nothing. I don't know the kids. I don't know the that connection, right? So I had to start building those relationships. I had to start from the human piece, and once I had that, then I had to look at, what do I have here? What's the program? Do I need to build a program which was basically what happened? And I'm sure that many people has the same thing. You get to a place and there's nothing, and you have to kind of start from scratch. So I was doing many of the things, like similar I was trying to see what I did in Cambodia and see how I could adjust it. But it's not always evident. So I had to see the equipment we had, see the facilities we had, see the spaces I could use. And from that, I started to build my program and use the meaningful PE framework with this. So you made

Ty Riddick:

this assessment of these. This is kind of the facilities. This is the context. Of course, you've started building some strong relationships with those kids. What do you see? And this it can be like in your ideal utopian world. What do you see in this new context, as an opportunity or like some or potential, and then, what are some of the challenges that you're facing in trying to move forward with the meaningful phys ed framework.

Leti Cariño:

So a potential definitely is bringing that idea of meaningfulness and relevance of physical education and teaching the kids how to be, to enjoy movement and and to make it relevant for them and help them to realize how cool it is, right? And it's not me just telling you what to do, but guiding them through through the process. The challenges I see is that when I came here, the first. Thing I noticed is that many of the kids were very competitive. And when we did the invasion games unit, for instance, everything was about winning and losing. And I know this happens in many settings of international schools or schools or anywhere in the world. But it hit me, especially here, because I guess maybe the students I was teaching before, they were used to the way I was teaching, so they were not getting into that competitiveness anymore. And so suddenly I see kids crying and really suffering, and I'm like, wow, I need to change this attitude. This is not what we want. We want them to enjoy. We want them to have fun. We want them to understand that it's not about winning or losing. It's about learning. It's about learning and understanding. Like, okay, my team lost, for example, if it's so important for you, why? What is the other team doing? How can I change this? So I'm not losing every time, you know, but also like telling them to work on the skills, to have fun, to enjoy the games. And I see this changing, and I actually have talked to kids and say, Oh, thank you. Thank you for changing, and thank you for understanding that this is not only about, like the outcome of winning or losing, it's about all the things that come in. But it has taken a few months to to change this for sure. So that's, that's, that's a challenge, but it's an opportunity to

Ty Riddick:

for sure. And I think the fact that you it sounds like it was a bit before you got there, it sounds like it was a bit of a cultural piece of this is what was valued previously. So the fact that you've actually been able to make headway and start to change that in just a few short months, that's impressive. Doug always, I think it was Doug. He was at our school once, and we're talking about the same thing. The kids are super competitive, and that's not necessarily a negative thing. And I think the way he framed it was, well, there's a difference between competing against and competing with. When it's competing with it's we're trying to it, want it to be fun, and trying to understand, like, the most exciting part about a game is maybe not winning and losing, like in volleyball. I mean, volleyball unit right now. The most exciting part is sometimes a long rally. No one likes winning volleyball, 25 to four. We want it. We want to try and create that, the experience where we can get to there's a long rally back and forth as Torres, 2725 and that a lot of joy can arise from that. But as you said, if you know, you have to, I think, lead with that why? And lead with that social bit first, because we, of course, we don't want kids crying because they've won and lost. So there's definitely, I think, a healthy competition aspect to it. You mentioned just before, we were talking here about kind of the physical environment of the school under construction and that you're teaching your lower elementary kids right now don't really have an indoor space to go. So how are you managing that? And how does that impact? Maybe the way that you're able to implement meaningful phys ed,

Leti Cariño:

well, we have a cover court that is for upper school. So here, instead of elementary, they say Lower School and Upper School. So admin has helped us finding times where we can actually share that space. So that's already helpful, but it has no walls. So I miss the walls because I love visuals, and I also miss it's like kind of far away from everything. So we need to bring all the equipment, which is a lot, usually, and also bring whiteboard and so that that affects what I do. Because I really, I, I guess for me, having a whiteboard is like essential for the visual, for the kids, even for myself, and not having that like a normal thing, like a simple thing, impacts how I'm doing meaningful PE, for example. And then the fact that sometimes we don't have that space. So then we are outside, and here is a tropical place. So it's it's hot, or we have hot rain, so we have to find another place. We have the multi purpose space, multi purpose room booked for Lower School the whole year, which is great, but there's always something more often times can Well, can I please have it? Can be and we booked it just in case it rains. Rain is too hot. It's a small place. So again, they're trying to find solutions to help us, because we know that the space we we had for law school had. Another COVID court is behind the wall where the construction is happening right now. So we're grateful for that, but yet, sometimes we have not a lot of places to go to, and so I'm trying to be creative with the spaces we have, the streets. So try to find the shade if there's like playground for especially with the pre case I teach over there. So it's nice to be in the outdoor window shade, and it gives me lots of space for inquiry and for exploring and this type of thing, but for a meaningful PE sometimes, if I wanted to do I don't know something specific. It's a bit tricky.

Ty Riddick:

Yeah, so you mentioned, when you're in Cambodia, this individual activities unit. I've written a blog about it, and I'll link it into the show notes. So let's just say, hypothetically, you just wanted to run that exact same unit in your new context. Would that be possible? Or how would you have to adapt it to meet the needs of I think it was a grade five that you did in Cambodia. I know you mentioned you have a grade five class again this year. So if you were to run the same unit and try and do it the exact same way with your new grade five students in West Africa, how would you have to adapt it, or make it different to meet their needs?

Leti Cariño:

I had to adapt it because there was some equipment that wasn't there. For example, we didn't have hurdles. We didn't have the rockets that we used to throw with, you know, like, for like juggling, it was really like working on, on running the different events. We really had to be creative. And yet, we were able to start with a goal setting. With the different events, they were just a bit different. We had to trick to tweak the I had to tweak the the unit, because of the equipment we had, because that's a unit that we did out outdoors. So having the field was fine, right? And I did in Cambodia, I brought, I had a whiteboard there that was living there outside, and then that was fine. And then I will just bring my chart paper, and I will just write down or the kids will write down the reflection. So that was fine. We did it outdoors, so it was okay to do it. Excellent. Yeah,

Ty Riddick:

what I'm what you've highlighted, what I was hoping you would highlight was, you know, even though context can be a lot different, very different, in your case, in Cambodia and West Africa, some of the same principles are still going to be present, even though we don't have the same equipment, even though there's no hurdles and things look a lot different. You mentioned that well, the the aspects of goal setting and that aspects of reflection are going to are still going to be core tenets of what we're doing, even though the context is drastically different. Before recording, we spoke a little bit about the reflection, and obviously, when you were in Cambodia, you shared a little bit about how you use stickers or just write challenge and different ways that you would reflect. How are you doing the reflection now with your students, when I think you'd mentioned, your schedule is a bit chaotic,

Leti Cariño:

so it's I'm doing similar things. Sometimes reflection can be just a sentence talk to each other, or just something that you want them to finish with. It can be something that is just stop the lesson, whatever you were teaching, you bring everyone in, and you talk about what's happening. Why is this happening? And you have the group talking, talking to somebody, talking to the whole group, what I notice is that when I do that, oftentimes is the same students doing it. So then I try to also find different ways what I did, for example, the other day I had with this grade five class, I had, we're just doing a unit of striking and fielding, and I thought that I wanted to know more about what they knew about this unit, which I'm finding out they don't know so much about it. So then I told them, so I just had very good we did a game. And I this is something that I also want to say, oftentimes, you do a quick game, and so you have everybody active with their minds, and then you stop them, and you take them and you say, Okay, now we're going to do this five minutes. You have five minutes. And so there were two questions. One was, how is this unit personally relevant for you, which many kids didn't even understand what that meant. And so it was great to have it there, and that's why, purposely I had them like writing down. And the other question. Was about challenge. What is something that is challenging you in this unit? And we just had, like, I want to say it was like the third day of the unit, so we were really starting it. And so I had them, like, five minutes after the game. And I learned that for some kids, it was running very challenging to just like, catch a ball, for example. For others was like the striking piece, which is quite often right when we do striking and failing team games, but with the personally relevant piece, some kids were like, Yeah, this is personally relevant. And they just wanted to write something right? This is personally relevant because I don't play really striking and filming games, but I want to try, okay? But for others, they were really saying, No, this is not no, this is not relevant for me. And so I really wanted to find a way to help them. How can this can be personally relevant for you? And I told them also, within this question was, like, what can the teacher do to make it personally relevant for you? And one of the things that somebody said is, like, they didn't like to use the tea you oftentimes we use a tea because it's easier for them to at least that's what we think it's easier for them to hit the ball. And so these kids say, why we cannot play baseball? I said, Yes, we can. We can. Why not? So he wanted to play like that. That's that game, that same game. The idea of baseball was that there was not a team. And so within the games we were playing in their group, they agreed that they were not going to use the tea, and so they were just like hitting without the tea. So somebody was like throwing the ball to them, and they just would hit with the with the butt. And this is an example of how sometimes small reflections can change the approach of the kid within the lesson right away. You need to make it very short. You cannot spend, like, the whole hour, because we don't have that much time. It has to be very effective. And you need to kind of read whether, when they give you the paper really, really quick, and so you can make the changes. Yeah,

Ty Riddick:

and that's a great example of something we reflected. We want kids to understand what it is that they find meaningful about activity, but it's also such useful feedback for the teacher to help inform where to go next. So and just in being able to read, okay, why are we using the T? Boom. Now, T is an option if you'd like it, or we don't need to use the T, so it's just a great way of responding to the needs of your students.

Leti Cariño:

One of the things that happened to me a few days ago when we were reflecting on an activity that we did with striking and fielding, I finished the lesson, and I had everybody sitting with somebody who they play the games with, and I told them was something positive that you learned today was something positive that happened today during the games. And so they had a little bit of time to talk to each other, and I'm mindful of this as well, to give them enough time to talk and not to stop them after 30 seconds. And then they A girl was sharing about the team, and she said, Yeah, our team was working really well. We're all supporting each other all the time. And actually, we all need a home run. We're playing diamond. So we really had like, three bases, and then another kid from the same group elaborates on this and says, yeah, no matter what we missed when we're striking or we were doing a pass and someone wasn't catching, we were always supporting each other. We never blamed each other, and that actually helps building confidence. And that was like, Wow, thank you for sharing that, because it really does. And you know what? When I make a mistake, I feel really bad about it, so I don't need everyone to tell me. But when I make a mistake, and my team is supporting me and it's telling me, Don't no problem, let's try again. That helps my confidence. So I'm really happy that you share this with me. Thank you. And so everybody left like happy. And so Julie, a good ending of the of the lesson that's awesome that

Ty Riddick:

relates to some of the things I'm trying to help my grade eights understand. You know, great ages is always an interesting year as we talk about all of these features. And sometimes I think about, well, which features are the most important? And for a while I didn't really know. I was like, Oh, they're all important. But I think that social piece is the one that kind of drives everything else. So the fact that kids are now willing to take risks and striking Fielding and start to build some confidence because they are feeling supported, I think, is just such a such a critical component.

Leti Cariño:

Yeah, definitely you mentioned,

Ty Riddick:

and I don't even know really how I'm going to phrase this, but you mentioned something interesting at the start of just before we hit. Chord about language, and you mentioned that when you said that kids didn't really understand what personally relevant meant, you mentioned that you are this is English as your third language, and your students that you teach in West Africa are not English language speakers. So I'm wondering if you could just discuss a little bit about the role that that language plays, and being able to communicate these things with students in in their mother tongue,

Leti Cariño:

so they speak French here. I mean, there's this, this school where I'm at, there's like, kids from all different countries in Africa, so it's very, very diverse, also in from kids from all over the world, which is very cool, and we love the diversity, but the kids who are like French speakers and do not speak English, I have the privilege to be able to speak French with them, and so that's really cool, because it's super helpful for me to build that relationship and to foster that relationship, and they don't feel like out of whatever we're doing, they understand right away. And it's so easy to connect with them and to get them do whatever they have to do. It doesn't mean that I'm not talking to in English to them as well, because they are English, especially, I can see now from the ones who are new, who are new to the school in August, and now, much they have improved their English, but still French, still their first language. And why not explain that activity that we're doing in their language so they really understand what to do, and they can get to do it right away. So that's super helpful, and that's something that I'm starting to think of doing. It's as part of the inclusion and and and as part of the, you know, one of the things that I'm trying to do, and it's not reflected in within the meaningful PE framework, but I think I'm trying to bring more into the DEI. J, you know, the justice, inclusion, the equity, and we are so such a diverse. Goal is to do these type of things, you know, being able to value all of us. We are we are international, we all have something to bring. And so if we can just break the barrier of the language, because we know how to speak that language, it really helps calm down the student who's like, totally lost, or help them feel safe and ready to learn.

Ty Riddick:

Yeah, I wonder. I used to teach in Korea, and I didn't, I didn't speak very much Korean, but I wonder, just even the context of their reflections, for you being, for students to be able to write a reflection in their mother in their mother tongue, and for you to be actually be able to understand those things, I'm just wondering, trying to reflect back on on my time in Korea, I'm wondering, okay, they wonder, what would be different if I was able to have them reflect in their in their first language? Interesting? Because I haven't, I mean, I hadn't previously thought of that. So just to wrap up with these ideas around implementing, you've now implemented meaningful phys ed at two different schools. I'm wondering, if you had one piece of advice in terms of somebody's maybe listening thinking about implementing it in their school, what's kind of the one piece of advice you'd give them to kind of help that implementation go forward?

Leti Cariño:

You know, I was thinking of this question, and I know many people say, start small, all these things, but I wanted to call it something else. And so you need to care. You need to care, and you need to have your inner will. And from caring, then you go find everything you ask for help. You find all your resources, you check, you learn, you read, you, you know, it starts with caring. It starts with wanting to do it. Then you go and then you do anything you want.

Ty Riddick:

That's, that's solid advice, yeah. I mean, I've just, I know how much you care. I can hear it in the way that that you speak about meaningful phys ed, but even listening to you share about all of these challenges that you face in this new context, and how hard you're working to find solutions to all these problems, problems that are you're trying to overcome for your students, and that just really just shows how much you care something that's a great piece of advice, and not one I don't think we've had yet, but I did have one, one last question for you, which is related to you, specifically, what's next for You with meaningful phys ed, something you're looking forward to in the future with your kids, or anything that you're kind of got percolating around up there.

Leti Cariño:

Well, I think I said it a little bit so try to add more to that justice piece, you know, to that equity, to that inclusion. Um diversity, right? And try to see how this fits within the meaningful PE framework, I think, is within the social interaction, personally relevant, you know? And seeing how we can do that. So I've been thinking of some ideas, actually, and one of, one of the things that I would like to do is starting doing like cultural games, that many of us might have a unit or something like that. But instead of doing a unit, maybe throughout a few months as a warm up or something, have the students sharing so contacting parents and asking them whoever wants to do it, to give them a voice and to give them agency, but also like, feel included. Like, this is this is part of me. This is something that I want to share with others. This is something I would like to to teach others about my culture, my heritage, even in in their language, if we could help translating or something like that, and learn, learn from each other. So give the chance to the students to share something. I think cultural gains is a good start.

Ty Riddick:

Yeah, especially with how diverse your population is, that's a fantastic idea when you sit much social justice. I know this maybe should be a topic for maybe a future episode. I know Deirdre and a couple others have looked at the compatibility between social justice pedagogies and meaningful phys ed pedagogy, and I think in my summary of reading them, shall probably oversimplify there is a lot of similarity there in terms of the Democratic nature of it. So yeah, definitely something worthy of exploring. And again, we deal with some of the same, I would just say, social justice challenges that you've described. So definitely interested to see where that goes. But thank you so much for being on the podcast with today Letty, and hopefully we'll get to a chance to meet you in person sometime soon. Yeah,

Leti Cariño:

thank you so much for having me. You.