Hobbies

I’ve included a selection of hobbies below. These are the skills and hobbies that give me insight and a competitive edge as an educator.

Weightlifting

Currently, my main hobby is lifting weights at the gymnasium. Covid has made certain other activities impossible due to restrictions on indoor and outdoor gatherings, but gymnasiums and fitness centers, due to strict safety protocols, are open assuming they follow their protocols.

The current pandemic aside, I am highlighting this activity as it ties into the Physical and Health Education curriculum and Big Ideas. Going to the gymnasium has given me a broader understanding of healthy foods, aerobic activities, safe stretching, anabolic resistance training, bodyweight exercises, and physical monitoring. These abilities and skills can be translated to students, though my understanding of resistance training would be for high school students outside of the lighter ‘band-resistance exercises.’ It has given me the ability to feel more confident teaching Physical and Health Education and it has made me a better athlete for keeping up with students during these activities as well. Perhaps, most importantly, weightlifting is about setting goals, achieving them, enjoying success, and setting new goals, and as an educator that is an essential experience for my students.

It’s rare for me to take pictures of myself at the gym, but here’s a picture of myself. Like every other aspect of life weightlifting, bodybuilding, powerlifting, and other anabolic hobbies and sports are about setting and achieving goals.
Here is a picture of my current deadlift max. It is 120kg, which is a good start!

Theatre

My longest-running hobby is theatre. My bachelor’s degree that I worked for from 2006 through 2011 was in writing stage plays and film scripts. Additionally, I have been an active member of being on the stage as an actor, worked an audience with my improvisational troupe, working off-stage as a stagehand, directing plays, and acting as security personal for productions. These activities have given me some skill as a public speaker, an understanding of how to ‘read’ an audience, some ability to judge authenticity or inauthenticity (not being honest) in others, some ability to read body language, and the ability to think on my feet. Most importantly though is that theatre has given me a love for art and the love for art is contagious.

In the theatre, it is always important to have a bit of fun. This is a picture of myself dressed up in a Roman helmet that was a prop in a previous unknown production.

Writing

As I mentioned in the previous section, I have a background in writing. This is not to say that I am a perfect editor or grammarian; however, it does mean that I have a comfortable background in the subject. The ability to write, read, edit, and analyze is a comfortable set of skills that I possess and a set of skills that I am comfortable utilizing in my students’ academics.  

These skills have obvious curricular competencies and transferable skills for English Language Arts, but also every other core subject matter in the curriculum. Like every other hobby though, there needs to be joy. Joy is the ability to experience life, the way a child experiences a new positive sensation, and this creates a contagious joy. Not every student, obviously, will love writing or reading in its entirety, but I passionately believe that every student will enjoy some section of writing or reading: assessing work, creating connections, drawing calligraphy, being read to, discovering new things, and exploring new worlds are possibilities that students need to experience.

I’m editing a manuscript in this picture for a friend of mine. While I don’t write as often as I once did, I still try to refine the skill. This picture was taken by my stepmother, Melanie Bennett, on my cellphone.