During our set up week, I was undertaking the task of rearranging the gym materials. It was laborious and cumbersome, so I was listening to podcast snippets on YouTube to help pass the time. I came across a video by Malcolm Gladwell, and the title of the video had my interest piqued. It was called, “On Spaghetti Sauce.” As a lover of spaghetti, and fully knowing Mr. Gladwell’s ability to tell a good story, I had to take a listen. Here is a link to the video so you can watch it yourself, because warning, spoilers are coming ahead.
When is a PE game perfect?
It wasn’t until I abandoned this question that I actually started making progress in creating games. The perfect PE game, like perfect spaghetti sauce, does not exist. The belief that a game had to go one way or the other was preventing me from being creative, from taking chances, and discovering new possibilities. What I realized was not to pursue singular perfection, but to create different versions of the same idea. The way that spaghetti sauce comes in certain basic archetypes, with sub varieties in each one, is how I think about game creation. Each time I test a game with the students, each class I make a small alteration like type of rule change, or maybe switch a material, add something, or take away another. The goal is to see how these small differences affect the enjoyment and how the gameplay and mechanics are altered. Sometimes a small switch creates a eureka moment, and everything works so much smoother. Other changes are unnecessary and not useful, so I use the Edison quote,” I just found a way that doesn’t work.”
No time did this become so important was the past year and a half. When we had to shift to at-home virtual learning, I had to go from a fully stocked and amazing gym environment to the individual child’s house, and there was no consistency of the actual location of where they performed my PE class. I could not assume that every student had the seemingly “basic” materials. This meant I had to come up with as many non-material activities as possible, as well as have variations of games that could use alternate sets of materials to accomplish the same task within the game. It was daunting, but we got through the remainder of the year somewhat successfully. The only way it worked was by programming in the flexibility we needed because so much was uncertain.
The next year, I had students in the gym, as well as students who were remote for the full year. I had to run two very different types of PE class, which again hinged on the need for flexibility, but the in school PE also had additional requirements of social distancing. This constraint changed a lot of what games I could do in the gym, but it also created possibilities for using alternate materials for games we played in the past. Having specific constraints can paradoxically help with creativity. Hockey mechanics in particular became a favorite alternative way of playing older games that required close contact or too much touching of the same material (back when we were worried about surface transmission). What I found were beautiful alternatives to previous games, which I thought were already “perfect.”
The point of this blog is that if you have downloaded any of my games, whether from the free resource section, or the website store, I don’t want you to look at them as “perfect” right out of the box. I know they work very well, but it isn’t until you adapt them to your environment will they be “perfect for you’. Taking the time to adapt them to your PE setting means you will have ownership over the lesson. These games are being implemented all over the world in lots of different environments and situations. Inside, outside, lots of access to materials, no materials, giant classes, tiny classes, each school environment has its own twist. If you need help adapting the lesson to your specific environment, I am here to help. I am thankful that you have taken the time to test out the power of integrated physical education lessons, and I want you and your students to have the best experience possible.