
Playful. Start and end with play to see what emerges. Support with practice or preparation.
2. What turning points have you encountered on your movement journey?
Many, but the key one for my recent direction was a brutally honest conversation with an ex pupil on a train journey. Told me some things that struck home and made me go away and search for some different answers.
3. What role has injury played in cultivating your current niche?
None but it does remind me to have an honest conversation about the negative side of movement with those I teach.
4. Do you consider yourself a teacher? Why or why not?
Yes, and privileged to be one. Teaching is about bringing something new to a person, to help them flourish in their lives. That gives my life meaning and purpose.
5. What has been your experience with physical education, both in the schooling system and sought out knowledge/ know-how elsewhere?
I have taught secondary school PE for 15 years in a variety of different contexts both in England and abroad. My personal feeling is that professional development for PE teachers after qualification is weak at best, which led me to using social media to help support my development.
6. How do you involve your mind/ emotions into your physical routines?
Still a work in progress.
7. What are your personal aspirations regarding movement? How do you hope to find purpose and use in the skills you have built?
Daily movement is powerful. I hope that I can use my knowledge and experience to give pupils the means to move on their own terms and use daily movement as a way to flourish in throughout their lives.
8. How can people find/ contact you? Do you have a site or social media handle to share?
On Twitter @imsporticus, via email @[email protected] and through my blog at drowningintheshallow@wordpr ess.com
Alex’s Recent Blog Posts

What PE Is & Isn’t
Alex Sporticus “The aim is not for us to teach them to leave their chairs, so they can be better ...

The Bad & The Best
Alex Sporticus A couple of weeks ago, Edutopia published an article entitled 5 Fun Gym Games to Get Kids Moving. I found the ...

Rethinking ‘Broad’ & ‘Balanced’ in PE
Alex Sporticus I dislike the guiding principles of ‘broad‘ and ‘balanced‘ when it comes to thinking about the PE curriculum ...

Ten Thoughts on PE Curriculum Change
Alex Sporticus “How you view the nature of the world and change – either as stable ‘things’ and ‘entities’ or ...

Performance and Learning in PE
Alex Sporticus “Finally, given that the goal of instruction and practice— whether in the classroom or on the field—should be ...

20 Mistakes Made in 20 Years of Teaching Physical Education
Alex Sporticus Physical Education is not inherently good. Children and young people will not automatically improve their movement, health, academic ...

Harm Free PE
Alex Sporticus How can we improve the provision of PE? My initial response to that question as a novice teacher ...

Meaningful Experiences in PE
Alex Sporticus Guiding Principles of Meaningful PE Movement has the potential to enrich human existence and Physical Education can be ...

A Tactical Games Approach
Alex Sporticus A Tactical Games Approach to teaching Games The tactical games approach aims to improve children’s understanding of the game by ...

Justifying School Sport
Alex Sporticus In the last few week I’ve had numerous conversations about school sport. Due to Covid-19 it has been ...

PE’s Dirty Little Secrets
Alex Sporticus “Skills are not practiced diligently; old habits are never relinquished; new habits are not developed; attitudes are not ...

Movement as a Way of Enriching Life
Alex Sporticus “It is our vision and not what we are viewing that is limited.” Nick Sousanis, Unflattening. A key ...

The Physically Educated Individual
Alex Sporticus With every government initiative in education there are unforeseen consequences. The current drive to build character through sport ...

Shaping the Game
Alex Sporticus At the heart of a games based approach to teaching is the challenge to the centrality of learning ...

Silent Coaching
Alex Sporticus Imagine this scene: The pupils are silent as they file into the exam hall. Their names are checked, valuables ...

Asking Students Better Questions
Alex Sporticus RECTIFYING A WEEK OF INEFFECTIVE QUESTIONING The PE Teacher has four clear ‘verbal’ ways to shape the learning ...

Affective Movement
Alex Sporticus The art of teaching, at its very core, is constant decision making and problem-solving in a dynamic environment ...

Competency as an Exploratory Framework
Alex Sporticus The ‘fallacy of perfected steps‘ is to suppose that one thing must be perfectly, and not just partially, ...

Scanning and Noticing
Alex Sporticus “When you are a step removed from the fray, you see things that come as surprises – and ...

Teaching Games, Part 1
Alex Sporticus Between Monday 25th July and Wednesday 27th July 2016 I attended the Teaching Games for Understanding Conference in ...

Meaning in Movement
The parts of our PE curriculum that I find the most difficult to teach are establishing behaviours for movement (Affective Domain) and ...