Ep. 10 - The Hero's Journey: Storytelling in PE w/ Zack Smith

Zack Smith has been an international early childhood educator since 2005. He taught preschool homeroom and early years PE at Shanghai Community International School between 2005 and 2014. From 2014 to 2024, he was an early years PYP PE teacher at the KAUST School in Saudi Arabia. In the 2024-25 school year, he is excited to take on a new challenge in upper elementary PE at Korea International School Jeju. As an educator, Zack is dedicated to foundation skill development, transdisciplinary learning, and student empowerment through innovative and continuously evolving pedagogical strategies, making storytelling in PE an impactful tool for him. In this episode, we discuss the position of Zack's approach to storytelling within the MPE framework. 

Show Notes

A Moving Child is a Learning Child - book

PHASE

What is important? How one early childhood teacher prioritised meaningful experiences for children in physical education

Marylin Fleer - Conceptual Playworld

Check Out Zack on YouTube

Interested in pursuing a PhD related to Meaningfulness? Check out the opportunity linked below - applications close June 15th. 

https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/280424/doctoral-candidate-in-physical-education

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

Transcript

Douglas Gleddie: 0:00

Ty, Hello, folks. You are listening to the meaningful podcast. Experience with myself, Doug Leddy

Ty Riddick: 0:10

and I'm Ty Riddick. Purpose of this podcast is to engage in conversations with those enacting meaningful physical education, both in terms of research as well as in their teaching practice and everything that falls in between.

Douglas Gleddie: 0:21

Thanks for joining us on with the show. All right. Welcome everyone to the meaningful podcast experience. I'm here with my co host Ty and our very special guest today, Zach Smith, who is coming to us all the way from Jeju, South Korea, and Zach, I'll let you introduce yourself a little bit of your background, where you've been, where you're at. Go for it.

Zack Smith: 0:51

Yeah. Hello, everybody. My name is Zack Smith. I am a PE teacher, solely International. PE teacher. I've never worked in my home country, which is the United States. I'm from the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. I wouldn't I was thinking about how I was going to introduce myself, and I thought I would. I was going to start off with story from my high school, which kind of informs the way I look at PE right now, when I was in high school, I was a swimmer, but actually I wasn't a swimmer, because when I first started swimming, like in eighth grade or something, I still held my nose when I was swimming. So I was swimming, I was a one arm swimmer.

Douglas Gleddie: 1:37

That's fantastic,

Zack Smith: 1:40

but Swimming was just like what we did in the summer. We had a swimming pool right up from my house, and I had a pass in the summer, that was where we hung out. But I and I wanted to be a swimmer, but I just I wasn't very good at it, so I did join the swim team when I was in my freshman year of high school, and we had this lane system, you know, like Lane six. Those are your beginners, those are your me's and Lane one were your speed demons. Um, so you know, just hanging out in lane six, getting better, getting some coaching, slowly, moving upward, upward, upward. Wasn't holding my nose anymore, but I wasn't very fast. And then by the end of my time, I actually had moved up somewhere around lane two or three or something, and ended up culminating in going to the state meet in the end of the season my senior year, so I was like an alternate on a relay team or something. So I just thought that was, like, that's a very good example of what, how I view PE, like, we gotta get, we gotta get to those kids that aren't the PE superstars, right? And if we can sell them on progress, you know, moving forward incrementally in your skills, then, you know, and I still swim, and I still move, and I became a PE teacher. So like it reminds me of how we develop long term lovers of physical movement, you know. So that was, that's something that informed me as a teacher. Then I moved on. Another thing that informs me as a teacher is like writing and art and stories. I went to an alternative liberal arts college called the Evergreen State College, and that's in Olympia, Washington, yeah, we didn't have grades. We had, like, a transdisciplinary approach, so we only had one program that everything went into. I could create my own classes. Create my own there were no majors either. I created my own major. You just worked with a teacher, with a faculty member to, you know, work out your syllabus and really figure out what you want to learn. And so, yeah, I studied art and culture throughout my college experience, which I it, you know, I didn't get a job after college that. My first job was delivering pizzas, but then slowly, and I was doing some music at that time as well. And took, you know, took a few years to fall into, almost literally fall into international school teaching, but that art and culture aspect I really try to bring into PE. That's why I'm so into storytelling and PE these days. And I really believe that we can, you know, like the transdisciplinary approach, integrating Pe into other areas and. Of school. So, you know, you know, we don't just do math and math class, we don't do, we don't just move in PE class. We have to do, we have to mix these things so they're not like all the knowledge is not crowded into silos, you know? It's, it merges, it mixes, it works together. It synergizes, right? Mm, hmm, so yeah. Then, as I said, I fell into an early childhood job in Shanghai, China, in 2005 and I was a preschool and ELL teacher. Then after a few years, I had a good buddy who was the PE teacher, like for my class, and like, up to, like, grade one, I think, and he moved on. And I asked my principal, you know, I was always playing with the kids outside and, you know, do you know, messing around, I was still young and energetic. I asked him if I could move into that guy's job. And that was in like, 2008 I think, or no, maybe seven or eight, yes, and yeah. So I became the PE teacher at Shanghai community International School. I worked that job all the way up to 2014 and at that time I was still kind of, I was, you know, I was learning the job. I was learning what's best. I feel like I was a little bit drill centered, but also, you know, like breaking skills down to their component parts, and, you know, practicing it over and over again in in, like, isolation, you know, which I probably don't I don't do as much now, but you know that I was just, you know, building up my toolbox, and in 2014 I moved to my with my family. Now, I went to China with a backpack, and I left with a container and a wife and a little three year old kid. And we moved to Saudi Arabia, and I was teaching only k1 we called it, which is the three year olds. Pe and I had about, we had, like such a huge early childhood population. The joke was that our compound was so boring, the only thing to do was to make babies. So we had a lot of early childhood students, and I had my own space. And in our early in our k1 center, and then I think around 2000 between 2015 and 2017 I had a really, well actually, that whole time, but 15 set to 17 were really fruitful for me, because I went to what was then known as the APEC conference in it was in Hong Kong that year. And I think the guy's name, he's an Australian guy. He gave a keynote. His name was Graham Dodd, is that right? Yep. So yeah, he gave a keynote, and in it he cited this book called A moving child as a learning child, by Jill Connell. I found that book, and it's all about how the body teaches the brain to think, right? So the body is the brain's first teacher, perfect for our early childhood and for all of our kids. You know, like the physical comes before the mental the physical lays the foundation for learning. And I just fell in love with that book and I brought it to my school. We did crazy book groups on it, like really dissecting it, applying it to our students. And we kind of, you know, we crafted a whole school approach to developing the physical or emphasizing the physical, the foundation skills in our school, and actually we brought Jill Connell out to our school two times while I was there, and I kind of developed a mentor, mentee relationship with her, and I still work with her to this day, so she's been really important to me and really informed My practice. Changed the way I coached and taught. You know, getting away from that drill Skill and Drill, isolationist approach, Splinter approach, to a more transferable skill approach, conceptual approach. I was also and that was my first that was my first experience in a PYP school, although I had been in IB when I was a kid, but when I was in high school. But also something that happened during that time was I met a guy called Andy Vasily, because he Yeah, he came into our school and he was actually my coach, which was amazing. Is it around that time maybe? I think 2017 I don't remember when the paper came out, the literature review on,

Douglas Gleddie: 10:08

yeah, 2017 2018 Yep, yeah.

Unknown: 10:11

I think I read it right around there, right when it came out. And that's when we started to, like, kind of bounce things around, you know, like anybody who was into it in our in our PE department, you know, Jorge Rodriguez arrived soon after that, we started, like, really digging into the meaningful PE framework, and, you know, figuring out how it applies to us and our students. And yeah, so perfect. Ben Andy, yeah, Andy introduced me to Tim and Deirdre because we knew there wasn't a lot of research or data on like meaningful PE in the early years, so we knew we wanted to work together. This was 2019, and I started like, I think my my priority, the way we we went at it is I, I was focusing on personal relevance, the personal relevance feature of the framework and my, my idea was that storytelling is personally relevant to all children, because, you know, that's what I what I call, like, the language of childhood, but actually it's the language of humans really like we, we we Learn through stories. We all enjoy stories. You know that whole idea of the collective unconsciousness, archetypes. You know, Jungian psychology. Joseph Campbell, the hero with 1000 faces all the way through like you know your Harry Potters, your your hunger games, your whatever you know that. You know there's this hero's journey that most many characters go on in a story. And if you can dissect it and you can master that, that's kind of cycle that characters go through, you can apply it to, you know, pe games, or you or your whole year, really. And like telling a story of using stories to make PE personally relevant to children. At least that was my idea. So we set out to test it. I was doing mostly story based education in PE class, you know, and then using the environmental design to support the stories, and then we were actually interviewing children about their experiences, what was meaningful to them. In PE class, Andy would come and help me collect data while the kids were playing and I was working with them. And then right when we I think we did it for about three months or something like that. Right when we were finishing it up, collecting our data, it was March of 2020, and then, and something exciting happened. Then, as we all went into it, retreated into our house, there we go. And so

Douglas Gleddie: 13:19

I'm gonna, I'm gonna push pause on your story for a minute. And I love, I love where you're going. So thanks first of all for setting that context right from, you know, right from middle years on which, which I love. But I want to go back a little bit so you, so you read the article in 2017 and that took you on a journey, but I want to go back to So you spent most of your career as what I would say, early years. PE Yeah. And can you just clarify in your context? So you just mentioned the K ones in Saudi, which were at KAUST, which were the three year olds. So what were the ages you were teaching there?

Unknown: 14:01

When I first started, it was solely three year olds. And then a few years in, we changed our approach. So we weren't specializing in one grade level, but we we divvied up the students from three to six, basically. Okay, so, yeah, just three to six, perfect. So I want to just just ask you a little bit concretely, and I will. I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw some some I'm gonna pump your tires a little bit. Zach, because I was very fortunate. Well, first of all, I, I think I met you for the first time at one of those early APPEC conferences. I don't know which year it was, but one of them, if not both, yeah. And then we're able to connect again in Phuket. And I went to your storytelling session there, which is fabulous, but we'll save that for a little bit. And then I was able to to come and visit you and Andy and and the whole crew there, Jorge and Adam and everybody else at KAUST. And I waas able to observe a couple of your classes, and as you said, you had one very eventful class. But yeah, I will say I feel you're one of the best early years phys ed teachers I've ever seen in action. So thank you for letting me into your classroom. That was super great. And it just for those that can't see. Zach is blushing furiously right now, but yeah, he's also nodding and smiling and feeling quite proud. So we're good, we're good at that. There we go, flex. Yeah, exactly. Flex a bit. So as someone who has focused in those early years, what I'd like you to break it down for a little bit for us is, why meaningful PE at that age? What meaningful PE looks like at that age, broadly, and then how, and for the how, if you want to wait with the storytelling for later, that's fine, so maybe let's focus on the why and the what. If that's okay, yeah. Well, you know, I, for me, I think that the meaningful PE framework is applicable across all ages and but it is for early and the reason why I would say is because we have a diverse range of students in our classes, no matter what age you're at. You know, like some kids love to move. Some kids are not sure about if they like to move or not. Some kids think they hate it, you know. Or, you know, they're, they're, they're shy. They have whatever they have, effective hurdles they need to get over, you know, sure. And the meaningful PE model allows you to kind of differentiate for all the learners in your class, right? And the goal of early childhood PE is to, you know, set the foundation for lifelong lovers of movement. Right? If we're not doing that, we've failed. Because if somebody comes out of early childhood PE class and they have an adverse reaction to physical movement and sport and games, then we've set them back right, and we've set the success of teachers that they're going to have back, and we've, we've kind of, you know, because the early years are the time when your preferences are starting to develop, right? So if, if you don't develop the preference for movement at an early age, you know that can be a problem later on. And as I said, physical skills are foundational skills for learning also. And then in why the meaningful PE framework works so well, I think, is because it allows you the latitude to, you know, try different things, right? Maybe there's a student that really, you know, they don't, they think they don't like PE because, you know, it's solitary activity or whatever. Well, here's, you know, who do you like to play with? Let's get you working so you're, you're motivated by social interaction. Let's let who, who can you move with? Who are your movers? Right? Your your fellow travelers? If you are, you know, like a high, I don't want to say high level, but a very motivated and skilled mover, you need to be challenged, right? Or your crave, maybe you're craving challenge. So let's, let's get you here. Let's, let's give you something to go above and beyond, right? You know, maybe you are like one of those, and I say this in the most delightful way possible, nerdy or geeky, or whatever you know, you're we can, we've gotta, we've got an avenue for you to for, you know, to use stories so that physical movement is personally relevant to, you know. And maybe you just want to come and have fun, you know, like there's, there's something for everyone there, you know. And then also, you get into one of the first when I started presenting, one of the first presentations I got into was called The Art of surrendering control, right? So I'm interested in students becoming like independent learners, self regulated learners, assessment capable learners. So the meaningful PE framework gives me, like, the up, or the impetus, really, to use those democratic practices, listening to students voice, giving them choice, setting them off on their way, like giving them the tools to, like, you know, regulate their own learning, and I can, and I'm always trying to get into, like, little smaller groups so I can work with a small group. There's some kids doing something that they can do independently. There's some kids working with an aid on something else, you know, because I don't I, I want to get away from, like, whole class interactions. You know, I'm always trying to get into smaller you. Groupings and mixing them up, and like, the meaningful PE framework gives me license to do that, you know, like to, you know, we can trust our kids after we've given them, like the tools that you know, to make sure the play is constructive, right? While they're still exploring, they have freedom. So that's why I think the meaningful PE framework really lends itself to effective early childhood PE. And you've, I mean, you're obviously engaged in a fair bit of scaffolding in there. But then, yeah, I was at the recent PHASE China conference back in April, and Rick Baldock talked there about, yes, scaffolding is important, but if you never remove the scaffolding, then you haven't used it to its full extent. So I hear you saying that the other parallel I hear is that you mentioned, you know, stories are great for this age of kids, but they're also to story is to be human, right? That's how we learn about each other. And I feel when we talk to most teachers, I would say, all so far, and we say, You know what attracted you, the meaningful PE framework. There's a constant thread in there of this fits how students learn. It fits, you know, the idea of of striving, searching for meaning, I think, is something we do from the womb, you know, cradle to grave sort of thing. So, no, that's that's really helpful. I think that gives us a good, a good context there, Zack.

Ty Riddick: 21:28

I want to dig in a little bit to the how, yeah, and just what, like, I've never, ever heard of anybody approaching phys ed through this lens of storytelling. And I'll share my example that I tried it once based on your work, but we'll leave that for maybe another time. And so you've presented for a number of years on this idea of storytelling and phys ed, and there's really nice parallels with we had Scott Kretchmar on earlier, and he talked a lot about how a physical activity is story. There is, there's, there's a rise and fall, and you're swimming. I love that you started this podcast with a story, and you highlight that, that rise and fall, and now that you're on Jeju, surrounded by water, and I know how many pools your school has, you must, you must have peaked. So you've presented again a number of times, this idea of storytelling and PE and how you can kind of use these narrative structures to unlock meaning. I'm really curious if you could tell us, how did you really develop this approach, and for those of us who originally, like myself, just can't really comprehend what storytelling and phys ed can look like, if you can really provide us with an example of what that looks like in your practice,

Unknown: 22:38

yeah, well, how I developed it is. It was just kind of natural to me, you know, going back to my my background, and, you know, the arts and culture, I was already using stories, but I wasn't really, you know, like, so in this game, we are the bears. We're trying to go through the forest, you know. And we, we want to cross this river. How are we going to get across this river? You know, that kind of thing. And but then Andy, what came along. And he was like, We got to write some of this stuff down and use visuals. You know, we'd collected some data that the students were more engaged when, you know, there were visuals to go along with it. So I started doing, like, rudimentary pictures and Google Slides and stuff. And I had a unit that was that really lended itself to the stories it's it's become so, so I feel complicated now, but it was the unit was called. It was a creative movement unit. So we're trying to, you know, use the the elements of creative movement, body, action, space, time, energy, to link movements and sequences and tell stories through movement. That was, that's the the basis of the unit, and I decided that I was going to start off with an anchor text for the unit that kind of brought everything together. And I thought about, and this is what we what Rachel and I we, we recommend. You know, people who want to start with storytelling and PE class, what was the story that you enjoyed when you were a child, right? And how can you like movement to it? So my story that I thought fit was stone soup. I don't know if you know the story of Stone Soup. There's some hungry soldiers. They go into a village, and all the villagers hide their food because they don't want to share. But then the soldiers kind of trick them into sharing by saying they're going to create this stone soup. When once they start making the soup, everyone finds out, oh yeah, I had some carrots, I had some meat, I had some potatoes, and they. All add it into the big pot. Everybody shares it, and they have a grand old time. So this, I was thinking of the stone like the stone soup as a metaphor, especially the pot. So we're adding in all these different elements of creative movement to create like a creative mover, right? And we called it the magic soup pot, and that was the name of the the unit. So after the kids and I acted out that story as like, kind of a, like a tuning in to the unit, right? You know, like, we're bringing in all these elements of movement, we're going to keep them in this pot. And we actually had it wasn't a physical pot, but like a taped outline of a pot down on the ground. And the kids actually sat around it when they came and inside. Every time we did a story, I would take another, like the the title page of the story, the frontis piece, I call it, that got taped down onto the ground inside the pot. You know, we would stir it up after we did it, you know, we tossed the stories in. And every story was about a different element of creative movement, you know, like going fast, going slow, different levels, high, medium, low, different pathways, straight, curve, zigzag. You know, these are the elemental movements that you know, not only in creative movement, but also in, you know, in sport, right? We need to zigzag and curve, and we need to go fast, sometimes we need to go slow. So all those things went into the pot. Every time we've had a we shared a new story, we put it in there, and the kids could actually, like, interact with it. They love go at, like, crawling on the floor to, like, check out the stories that we've done. Or if like another class, you know, maybe there was a story that another class had done that we didn't get time for in another class, they'd be like, why? What we don't know this one, what we want to we want to do that one. And then also, at the same time we were you, we use the environment in different ways, you know, like if a story had a mountain, we're very blessed. In my school, I had my own debt. Or in my previous school, not quite the same here, I had my own space. We had, not that we're not fantastically resourced here, but we I just, you know, it's it was less shared. So I could take all this stuff, put it there, leave it the kids could explore it like a giant mountain of mats, or like, you know, pulleys that the kids would be pulling themselves on scooter boards. We called it the trolley, you know, like benches where they could crawl through hoops, you know, so, like tunnels and caterpillars and all this different stuff that was symbolic, right? And that's, you know, some you know, kids go from the concrete to the abstract. And, you know, we've got the concrete physical movement, but we're linking it to symbols. So that's, that's how I started in, you know, using storytelling and PE and that was like my experimental unit. And actually, that's the unit that we were working on in 2020 when COVID disrupted us. But then, actually, it gave me a chance to, you know, I'd been journaling, and then I wrote out like kind of my ideas and what happened in our unit, my conclusions, the choices that I made and why, and Deirdre and Tim actually put me together with a grad student in Canada named Adam Carter. He ended up writing a research paper along with Deirdre, and that ended up in the Journal of Early Childhood Education Research in 2022 and yeah, so that was like, that was my gateway drug into, you know, storytelling and PE and from there, I just started picking up, like, different tricks, different habits, and infusing stories more into PE class. So it wasn't like, Okay, today, you know, now we're doing stories. It wasn't additive. It was just, and I try to tell people, or this is what I stress with people, it's like, it's not an extra thing we're doing. It is how we're learning, right? You know, people think, Oh, I would love to do stories, but I just don't have the time. But if you look at the the learning through the lens of stories. Then, you know, your assessment comes out of that, your planning comes out of that the students can be more independent. You know, right now we've got the the presentation Rachel Ford and I worked on called the storytelling spectrum. We presented it at the. Days this past year, not the China one, but the where were we? Blanking on where we were, yeah, that's where we were. Bangkok, I always know where you are. Zach, just Yeah, that's right. I was wondering why you asked me to swallow that air tag, yeah. And then also, I was able to present it at ear coast this year too, in KL Kuala Lumpur, which was nice. So now we're working on, uh, branching it up. Like, how do you stories work? Great in early years. How can we use them in middle Elementary and upper elementary? And basically the answer is, you know, more student ownership, you know. And also, you know, we talk about moving from the conceptual to topic based, right, you know. So in PE, you know, also we need to move from, like transferable skills to more splintered skills. You know, we get more specific as the students get older, and then from teacher initiated, like when I was teaching early childhood, I was coming up with a lot of the ideas. But as the students get older, we surrender that control. The students start to make their own stories. So that's how you kind of level it up as well. I think gamification is an aspect of this too, you know, like, for sure, sometimes the stories turn more into, you know, like, video games become more important for the kids, you know. So, like, how can you level up? How can we add a new boss? Or, you know, like, what's Yeah, what's the next what's the next challenge? What's the next level? Yeah, and then, and also, as I've gone on, I've, you know, gone more into, like publishing the stories with the kids, right? So I think that's, like, kind of an important aspect of the story process is celebrating it. So in my classes, we've done, like, student stories. Sometimes they're linked to homeroom. Sometimes they're not, like learning they're doing in the homeroom. But we can publish them. We can make videos. We've, you know, I've got a green screen behind me right now. We try to use bigger ones. And like, you know, get the kids to record their stories behind a or in front of a green screen, and then take them to technology class, edit them, add music, add, you know, backgrounds, add the words and like, that's ultimately my dream is, like, it be like, everything gets mixed together, you know, like, again, going Back to my transdisciplinary approach, like, I don't think I've really gotten there, fully gotten there, but, like, that's my goal, is that, like, everything mixes together.

Ty Riddick: 32:51

That's awesome. Thank you so much. That's such a good example. I think I read that article. Yeah, I saw the picture of the mountains, and I saw pictures of the of, like, the stone soup in the bottom. I couldn't figure it out, because, yeah, I'm probably, like, a thinker, but I did. I after, I think I read that paper, I think I went to my library and I said, Okay, this is what I want to try. I need a book that is, like, centered around, like, movement or something like that. And she got me a bunch, and I was like, I can't make any sense of this. But the one that did work for me was, I think I told you about it before was Journey by Aaron Becker, where there's no work. I remember, yeah, journey from blog post about that, different places. We did a loose parts play thing we're building with boxes and things like that. And it went really well. Use it for my observation. And, yeah, it all went super well. So thank you for that. I'm gonna ask one question. I sent it to you, Zach, and then maybe to you. Doug, storytelling, pedagogy of meaningful phys ed, or a more of a feature of meaningfulness in your eyes. I'll go to you first, first, Zach, and then maybe to you. Doug,

Unknown: 33:58

yeah. Well, as I said before, I think that it was, it was most close well, I at first, I thought it was most closely linked to personal relevance, right? Because stories are a language that we all share, right? And I don't think I've ever come across a kid that didn't like to, you know, read books or watch TV or something, you know, like, and that's, that's the through line, through how we learn. And I did a lot of reading on the subject as well. I, I'm, I'm kind of blanking on the name. I'd have to go back and look. But there's a really good book about, like, how store, how we learn through stories. I can't, can't come up with it right now, but

Douglas Gleddie: 34:44

you can send it to us afterwards, like we can add it to the notes, Yep, yeah.

Unknown: 34:50

So I don't, I wouldn't necessarily call it a feature of meaningful PE I think, and I didn't like as. I was reflecting that I claimed that that stories were personally relevant for kids, right? Because I shouldn't be saying what's personally relevant for somebody else. You know, I think that storytelling is like a vehicle to get at the features and all of our like, all of the teaching. Like, the thing about meaningful PE is you can't say, Okay, well, we're just going to go have fun today, or today is going to be personally relevant, or today is going to be challenging, you know, like you can't say that for kids. All you can do is, you know, kind of try to nudge them in that direction through the choices that you make, through the pedagogical choices that you make, ultimately, were asked, you know, it's kind of like a, like a dance, you know, like I, or, you know, like I, maybe I'm leading the dance at one point, you know, I ask you to do this. I introduce this material to you. I introduce this thinking routine, I introduce this material, or this game, or this drill or a rule inside of a game, and then, you know, like, you know, we, we kind of, we bounce off of each other, you know, I, maybe I'm leading, but now you've taken it in this direction. Now I'm that causes me to do something else, you know, like, it's a very interactive process, really, rather than like I tell you to do something, you do it, you learned you're done, you know, like, for sure, and then you know, sometimes it doesn't work, you know, but

Ty Riddick: 36:36

We're goiung to get to that next,. Another question about that, what happens when it doesn't work? Yeah,

Unknown: 36:42

well, what's what? What have we lost? Really, you know, like, No, I don't nobody, unless it's like a really terrible experience, like nothing was lost. Because either way, you're gaining experience, you know, I like to think of, like the classroom and the gym as, like, kind of a lab, you know, like, there's learning going on on both sides. I'm trying. I'm always trying different things. See if it works with the kids. If it does, we continue it, we refine it. If it doesn't, we still refine it, or we throw it out, you know, like, but I didn't, nobody got hurt. You know, it sucks when a lesson goes awry, or something that you did didn't work out the way you wanted it to. Like, I'm a very, I'm a pretty meticulous planner, but and, you know, I have to let something in me, like I I can see, well, when I'm planning, I'm trying to visualize what's going to happen in the lesson, and if it goes against what I visualized it. It does it kind of, it doesn't feel great, but like I always have to try to give myself that leeway to realize, like I had positive intentions and there was a reason why I did this, but if it didn't work for those kids, then, you know, we're trying something else. You know, I

Ty Riddick: 38:01

I like what you said there, because we always think, think like, what's the ceiling for phys ed? Like, what is the highest that I can achieve? But it's also thinking about, what is our floor and at the very bare minimum, we want experiences that are that are not going to be harmful, and doesn't mean that every lesson is going to be a home run, but what is the floor at the very bare minimum? Kim, I go, man, that was okay today. Well, that's fine. I

Unknown: 38:20

didn't like that, but it didn't you know, it didn't. It didn't physically harm them, and hopefully it didn't have any lasting effect. We go, we go on again, you know? We try again, yeah.

Douglas Gleddie: 38:31

And it was, it was a journey and learning, right? Um, Ty, I'll have to repeat your question for me.

Ty Riddick: 38:37

I'm just listening to Zach talk, and I'm thinking about that the story itself can have meaning for a lot of people. So then, is the place of story and approaching it the way that Zach does? Is this a pedagogical approach, or is it the the involvement in the story itself a feature of what people can can find meaningful? Yeah,

Douglas Gleddie: 39:00

that's a surprisingly good question from you. Ty,

Ty Riddick: 39:03

every once in a while,

Douglas Gleddie: 39:04

every once in a while,

Unknown: 39:07

that's really good. I would almost see it as as a pedagogical method. I think that, like, as you said, Zach, that kind of leads into perhaps some of the features, like, because what different kids would get out of different stories, and how do you choose those stories? Would be a whole nother topic we don't have time for today. But if you choose a story that allows people to come into it from their own angle, especially kids, you know, one kid might like it because it's fun and goofy, right? Another kid might like it because he can move through the story area with his friend. Somebody else might like it, because it's a challenging movement pattern for her as she's moving through and that's so I I would look at it that without going into it too deep, I would look at it that way, but I do think it's also the use of story itself as you. Talked about earlier. Zach like, not that we're, you know, involved in creating grand meta narratives and things, but isn't what we do in our phys ed class, creating a story of physical education and success for kids. So isn't that something that we're trying to look at, that we're all part of this story in our class? And maybe that's a little out there, but I do think it has merit. From Ty we talked on the episode with Kelly and Tori about what's the culture. How do we get to culture of meaningful P within a phys ed class and creating a shared story that people see themselves in? I think is a good, good way to go.

Ty Riddick: 40:38

Yeah, I like that. Like some stories, they don't always go the way that we intend them. Like that was a good was a good transition.

Douglas Gleddie: 40:46

was very nice. I had to pull that question and a good segue. That's, I

Ty Riddick: 40:50

know I was worried to be a little rusty. I feel like it's been a long time since we recorded one but one fateful day, and I had to check my messages here. Zach, November 14, 2024 I received a message from one, Zach Smith, talking about what happens when meaningful Phys Ed is not working. And the quote that I have from Zach is like, what do you do with a class that defies conventional thinking on practices that promote meaningful experience, things like student voice and choice, goal setting, democratic practice, practice, they don't seem to want any of that. Actually they rebel, which is great that we have. And that is totally my experience, like if I write a blog about something, that I write blogs about the good things, but it is my experience that well, that it is a continual process of figuring out. So one of you tell us a little bit about that grade five class. Here we are in May, and how things have gone with them since that fateful day on November 14,

Unknown: 41:46

yeah, um, well, we haven't said. Part of my story is I have made another move. I was in Saudi Arabia for 10 years, and this year I have moved from Saudi Arabia to Korea. International School of Jeju, the elementary school, and this is my 20th year teaching. This is the first year I've worked outside of early childhood education, and I'm working with grade fours and fives. So I knew it was going to be and I wanted that. I wanted a change. I wanted to challenge. I wanted to learn new stuff. I wanted to work with new kids. And I was like, this is going to be so great, like, all the kids are going to be able to, you know, set goals, and they're going to be so excited about it. And we're going to do thinking routines, and we're going to do reflection, and we're going to, you know, challenge ourselves. We're going to go on a on a journey of, like, incremental progress, right? I even learned that the word of, or the word for, like, continuous improvement in Korean, and I will butcher the pronunciation, but it's que sonada, and I thought, yeah, I get well you say well done. Somebody else will probably say, what? But? And I introduced that to the kids. I was, you know, like, because, again, we have a vast array of different kinds of learners in our school, and I didn't want to go with like, a benchmark approach, or like, I I wanted everybody to think about progress over product, you know, but the some of the the kids, most of the kids, I would say, many of the kids, they don't, they're not really used to thinking about that. And this goes back to, I think, culture, as you were saying, Doug, the culture of a school, the culture of a nation. So So my way of thinking wasn't necessarily their way of thinking, right? There's a lot of competition here. There's an emphasis on competition and winning, I would say, really, which isn't what I was used to, especially in early childhood PE, I hadn't really even thought of that. It was like, we're in PE class. We're all here to get better, you know. But and then, you know, like those pieces of meaningful PE, let's co create, or CO construct our success criteria. Let's, you know, let's, let's think about where we are at the beginning of the unit. Let's activate our prior knowledge, and then let's see where we ended up at the end of the unit. Some of that, you know, I think those are, like, lots of or let's set goals as well. Those are, like, the pedagogical practices that meaningful PE calls out for the most, but they take a little bit of time, and they take time away from, like, moving sometimes, you know, and my students, I would say some of them chafed at that approach, you know, like, and even the storytelling, they weren't that really into it, you know, they were like, What are we? Doing, let's go play soccer, you know, or whatever you know, like, why are we doing this? This isn't, this isn't reading class. This is PE class, you know. And yet, we had, we had some issues, you know. And, you know, I, I really, I've, I do believe in that stuff, but I also believe that you need to meet your students where they are right, you know, different. And this actually was the isolated class that you're talking about was one of the more vocal, you know, you get a mix of kids that just bounce off of each other in just the right way, you know. So, you know, I had to, I had to change up. And I just, and I think in November, that was a low point of a nadir. You might say of my year that sometimes we call it the learning pit, or on the hero's journey, I was in the abyss, you know, like I was, yeah, I was at the bottom of the cycle there, yeah, but I was coming out, and the hero always comes out of that with, like, some gifts, you know. And that's what they take to change the world. And then the cycle repeats, you know. So I actually, you know, when I I encounter this, like, I want to try different things. And actually, I was lucky enough to go to ear coast and go to a series of workshops by Aaron Bailey. He's into the dynamic PE approach, which he has, and he it's just, it's not even like, it's not a it's not revolutionary, it's just like ways of organizing so things are more active and more efficient. And like, you know, you can kind of use signals, with whistles, with music, you know, like kids don't sit down. They just array themselves in open space. Because I find like, when we're when we're getting together on the ground, you know, like, and everybody has to be quiet. That's when we get, like, the rebellion. It's like, I don't want to do this. I'm here to move, you know, like, but if you can sneak it in and then, and then problems arise, you know, like, you get into like kids poking each other, or like talking, you know, you know, whispering to each other, and it's not beneficial for everybody. And I'm talking a lot, you know, and they're supposed to be quiet, you know. And it just doesn't work. It's not what I know from early childhood. And I decided, you know, this dynamic PE approach kind of really opened my eyes to a new way of doing it, because now we're, like, constantly moving. You should see the kids when they are in my class, they are coming out of my class, they are pouring sweat, dude, because we're always moving, you know, we have water breaks and breaks, but like, we're never, like, in one space. I used to have these, like, delightful slide shows. I spend a lot of time on design and, like, you know, like words on the screen, but we don't. We don't use that anymore. I use it as a guide for myself. You know, like to plan and to, like, remind myself. But now we're just moving. We're stopping in like, one spot and then, you know, like, I blow the whistle five times. They get into groups of five, you know, then we go play, you're there, you're there, you're there, we're going and I think that's the direction that I'm moving in more and because we started it midway through the year, it is not as effective as it's going to be in the future, where we have the like routine set out from the beginning of the year. And basically that's my idea for like, Trojan horsing these ideas in, you know, like, and then maybe I can have, like, Well, five kids are doing this. Five kids are doing that. I'm working, you know, again, going into smaller groups and isolated, not isolating, but, you know, like giving kids more more attention, really, you know, like in in concentrated groups, then we can kind of, you know, talk about how we can set goals and make a plan for achieving them, and then reflect on how we did and how this applies to real life, and, you Know, Like all that, but do it in a more, a more streamlined, more developmentally appropriate manner, you know. So I'm really excited about that. And, yeah, that's, and again, it's like, that's what I love about teaching. It's like, I never I, I don't ever do anything the same way twice. You know, like I have good ideas, but they it's constantly evolving. The gym is a lab where I'm learning about myself. The kids are learning about me. They're learning about themselves, they're learning about PE they're learning about what they like, what they're good at. Yeah, and

Ty Riddick: 50:01

what you said, it remind like there's we at the crux, I think, of meaningful is that is you're making continual judgments about why, what and how well I'm doing with respect to meaningfulness. So you have this approach that you brought in and for this, for this group, hey, maybe this isn't going well, but the way that you're using the framework then as well. Then what are these kids after and if it is that, and that would make a lot of sense in Korean culture, where a lot of time it is so academically rigorous, and there's so much pressure that is a culture. And I don't want to paint, you know, all Korean culture in this broad strokes, but they're very product oriented, yeah, and doesn't the process is great, but it's ultimately got to get you that product. And I don't know all of your kids, obviously, but from my time there, you spend all day in school. Your parents have you in hogwan or something else after school. Yes, that's great way to reason that when you come to physed, what you really want is, like, I just need to release all of this, this pent up energy that I have. And so I think even though it's a different approach than you're used to, you have implemented meaningful phys ed in a way that you are can making those judgments based on what that group actually needs. And I believe there's a paper from a group of Spanish pre service teachers, I'll put it in the show notes, and they found relief as one of the things, the features of meaningful phys ed. And it sounds and obviously my own experience teaching at the same school for four years that that phys ed as a place of relief can actually be was meaningful for them.

Douglas Gleddie: 51:30

Yeah, that's thanks for bringing that up. Ty, think that's really good.

Zack Smith: 51:35

I'd love to read that paper.

Douglas Gleddie: 51:36

Yeah, I can. I can send it to you. I think I'm pretty sure I have it here. But what I was thinking as you were talking, and you can shoot me down on this if you want. Zach, this is just a place to exchange ideas, but I hear where you're moving from early childhood into this middle elementary area. It to me, it's almost like you're shifting from explicit storytelling like through actual stories to making that story an implicit part of your phys ed class. So I, I would be really interested to see if you could frame your phys ed class as a hero's journey, and what are the challenges you need to overcome, like, I wonder if that age of kids would would jump on board that. And yes, it's a review, but I can look at this as you know, I'm I need to work on this. That's my challenge. What are the gifts I can get from other people in my class and from my teacher to I just think that'd be a really cool progression of what you've already done. But feel free to, you know, knock me down.

Zack Smith: 52:42

No, that's a really good idea. You can send me to the

Douglas Gleddie: 52:45

abyss act. It's okay, yeah,

Unknown: 52:48

yeah, Jafar pushing uh Aladdin down into the Cave of Wonders. That's

Douglas Gleddie: 52:53

right, yeah. So, as we kind of get to the end of our, our roughened time here, we always say we want to keep it to, you know, 30 to 40 minutes. We've yet to do that, so, which is totally fine, because we want to keep it flowing. So just to kind of close off, if we look at things from from the lens of storytelling and stories, what would be your advice to kind of storytellers with a meaningful PE lens,

Unknown: 53:23

yeah, well, as I said, we Rachel Ford and I, we always recommend, like, the gateway drug is the stories of your youth, you know, like, what, what engages with you, and how can it be moved? You know, I always tell the kids I when I when with the early childhood I like to, like, tease their teachers a little bit. I'm like, in your class, you have, when you read stories, you have to sit on the mat, you have to be quiet, you have to listen intently. But we don't do that in PE class. We don't read stories. We move stories, you know, so you can it can be as simple as, like, retelling a story through movements, right somebody else's story and telling it through movement. You know, you can also go the route of writing your own stories, because maybe that Len if you're a bit creative, you don't even have to be that creative. But, you know, like something you want to, you know, specifically explore a skill or whatever you know, just write a story around that you know. Start with three characters, make them engaging characters, make it silly, make it funny, and then it it's basically you're writing a story of a drill or an exercise that you want to do or something like that, right? Also, you can write stories with the children, right? So kids love to do that, you know, like, we need a plot, we need a title, we need three characters, we need the setting and we need a movement concept, right? We've done that a lot in PE class, you know, I've, I've, I've drawn up a template, and I can actually share this with you guys too. I have, like, you know, my my pack for my presentations that all, all the teachers get. So a brainstorming template. We have storyboarding templates for the older kids, you know, you they can draw out what they're going to do, label what the movements are going to be. You know, that is totally fine. So you're working with kids, you know, your level of facilitation, it's up to you. Sometimes, if I want to make it into like a sweet product, we don't have a lot of time, I will do it by myself. I mean, we get the ideas from the kids, and then I take it to Book Creator. I make a nice product for them. You know, it gets shared at the creativity and innovation expert exhibition. The kids love it. The parents love it. It looks great. Or, you know, you know, your level of involvement varies. You know, as the children get older, you know, they're doing the work by themselves, you know, or as much as they can, you know, it, it's, it's the level of facilitation is up to you. And especially as they get older, I think it decreases. And then, of course, I always shout out, conceptual play worlds. This is like something I learned during COVID When I was teaching online. Like the conceptual Play World is an imaginary space where, you know, children interact with each other and the teacher stories and the environment to explore concepts and solve problems. So we were lucky enough to have a dedicated space where we chose an anchor text and based on what we wanted the kids to explore, and then every part of that area, we use the environment to like every part was a part of the story, you know? So as you're reading the story, you're chanting, you're you're listening to the story, you're also moving, you know? And that Jill Connell says a lot of that is, you know, that sticks the language right, movement plus language equals understanding, so, and the kit, and that is a very powerful experience for the children, you know, we did, you know, going on a bear hunt? This is for young kids. Of course, we did another story that was like dealing with directional language, Rosie's walk, you know, so and directional language is that hugely important in PE class and also in academic learning. You know, it has interpretations for everything from handwriting to reading to math to measurement to, you know, all this stuff.

Douglas Gleddie: 57:48

So, you know, in all the crossovers with like, that's love and principles of, you know, space awareness, how the body moves, where the body moves, like that, all. But to make those connections with the other learning pieces is really important too,

Unknown: 58:02

right? And as we do it, we are active. So in theory, the the knowledge is, like sticking a little bit because it's a concrete knowledge, you know? It's a kind of kinesthetic, kind of learning, yeah, I love that. Yeah, I would. I would. If anybody is interested. There's a great website, conceptual play worlds, just Google it. It's an idea by Marilyn clear from Australia. She she has been working on this for a long time. And if you don't have to have a dedicated space, we were lucky enough to have a dedicated space, but it can be anywhere it's, you know, you can do it outside. You can do it on the playground, for sure. Um, so those are some things that I, I think are like, ways in to storytelling, you know, like and as the same thing with meaningful PE that we say, like, you don't have to be a meaningful PE expert, as you at at the beginning of your learning of it, right? You know, try one thing, you know, try something, see how it goes and, you know, keep learning, keep reading. Use the student data that they're giving you, like just millions of formative assessment points, you know, and then go from there, keep what works and throw out the rest,

Douglas Gleddie: 59:22

you know, yep, and climb out of that abyss when the time comes to climb out That's right. Yeah, have out of the abyss That's right. Well, thanks so much. Zach, great being able to chat with you again. There's lots to unpack here, and for the folks listening, we'll, we'll put links and things in the show notes, so you can always look there and find things, and then I'm sure Zach is open to folks who want to reach out for a little more conversation or direct to some different resources and places to go as well.

Unknown: 59:51

Always. Thanks guys, thanks Zach. Thank you. Thank you

Ty Riddick: 59:57

for tuning in to the meaningful podcast experience with Zach currently. Teaching on Jeju Island, it's only appropriate that we shout out all of our listeners in South Korea. If you have interest in meaningfulness, social justice or models based practices in phys ed, then the Norwegian School of sports science may have the opportunity for you. Applications are open until June 15 to be a part of their PhD program in one of these related areas. For more information, or to get in contact with Dr Mats Hordvik, who will be supervising the program, please check the show notes. See you next time you.