Andy Vasily: PE Blogger

     The first blog that I am going to discuss is from an educator by the name of Andy Vasily. Mr. Vasily runs a blog that focuses on teaching practices specifically within the physical education domain. His blog is highly influential in physical education and has even been awarded the best PE teacher blog and top PE contributor in the past. Although in the blog Mr. Vasily does not specifically address any one of the 21st century literacies in a direct sense he does discuss a major idea that can help any teacher to implement them into their classroom, and that idea is reflection. Reflection is a necessary tool for teachers in order to look back on lessons that they have taught and review them in order to make improvements. When implementing these 21st century literacies in your classroom, you as a teacher must reflect on and critically analyze your lessons and how they unfold in order to gain a better understanding of what went well and what didn't. Once you have done this you can make improvements and alterations to what didn't work as well as continue to use what did in order to implement these literacies with great effectiveness in your classroom. My personal favourite post from this blog is entitled "The Story of Alice and George which you can access here. 

     In this particular article Mr. Vasily discusses two people who are polar opposites from each other but they work together constantly trying to disprove each other so that they can both grow and create the most solid possible case for their ideas. Without the constant feedback ideas would remain stagnant and there would be no growth on either side. It is crucial to constantly be critical and surround yourself with fellow educators who do not necessarily see eye to eye with you. By doing this we are constantly questioning each other about what we do and why we do it, this helps us to further reflect on our teachings and analyze how we can alter them to make them better both for ourselves and for our students. This constant pushing of reflection can better help us to understand how we are going to implement the 21st century literacies into our classrooms and why we are going to, just saying "because they are important" is no longer acceptable in the teaching world and having this reflection will help in finding deeper meanings within our teachings. Refection will be a major concept in my future classroom both during and after an exercise. By reflecting in the moment and after a lesson (on moral literacy for example) I can begin to piece together what went well and what didn't in my head before it becomes cloudy. This clarity and thought can produce ways of overcoming issues that were faced and will surely better me as a teacher as well. 

     Mr. Vasily is clearly passionate about physical education as a whole as well as the use of reflection in his practice. In his blog there are multiple ways in which to utilize this reflective practice both as a teacher and as a way for your students to reflect, as shown in his blog post here. I believe that reflection is a great way to learn how to better incorporate the literacies into your own classrooms as well as to better your teaching practice as a whole. If you would like to explore Mr. Vasily's blog you can find the link to it here. 

References 

Vasily, A. (2016). PYP PE with Andy. Retrieved from http://www.pyppewithandy.com/pyp-pe-blog

Vasily, A. (2016, Feb 5). PYP PE with Andy: The Story of Alice and George. Retrieved from http://www.pyppewithandy.com/pyp-pe-blog/the-story-of-alice-and-george