Undergraduates Win Scholarships, Teach P.E. Teachers New Warm-up Routines

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Janet Filbeck, from right, Janet Forbess and Melanie Hosty were all honored at the 2015 state convention of the Arkansas Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.

Two University of Arkansas undergraduate students taught physical education teachers from around the state some new tricks at a state convention last month.

Janet Filbeck and Melanie Hosty were taking a class on teaching fitness with instructor Janet Forbess. Forbess assigned everyone a project to come up with some new warm-up activities P.E. teachers can do at the beginning of class.

"These activities are usually just three minutes or so before the class gets started," Filbeck said. "They get the blood flowing. We learned that a lot of teachers just tell the students to run laps while they set up that day's main activities."

Based on their class presentations, Forbess suggested the two students submit a proposal to be on the program for the 2015 state convention of the Arkansas Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance held in Eureka Springs in early November. Forbess said it's rare that undergraduates are invited to make a presentation at the convention, which this year included 30 sessions for participants.

"Their evaluation was off the charts," Forbess said of participant reaction to the U of A students' workshop.

The students also brought home scholarships from the convention. Filbeck won the Newman McGee Award and Hosty won the Past President's Award.

The students described the three warm-up activities they chose for their presentation: a variation of the cupid shuffle, a dance done at weddings to which they added lunges and jumping jacks; a bucket race in which students have to do different locomotor movements such as skipping, galloping or hopping as they race across the gym floor filling buckets with beanbags; and the dog tail in which one person has a bandana pinned to his or her back and a second person tries to pull it off. The hard part of that last activity is the person with the bandana puts his or her hands on the other person's shoulders from behind so the two together look like a dog chasing its tail.

"We had a hundred P.E. teachers in the room with us," Hosty said. "We got them to volunteer to demonstrate our activities but, for some, it took a little coaxing."

Both students are pursuing bachelor's degrees in kinesiology with an emphasis on P-12 teaching from the College of Education and Health Professions. Filbeck will graduate a year from now. She wants to teach physical education but would also like to pursue a graduate degree and teach on the college level.

Hosty is on track to graduate in May of 2017. She also wants to teach and coach at the high school level, probably track and softball. Both women were high school athletes; Filbeck was a competitive gymnast and Hosty played basketball, softball and soccer, ran track and was a figure skater.

"This was a good experience for us," Hosty said of the convention, which was the first one either had attended. "We met a lot of people and made connections."