Disc Golf in the Pool

With 7 PE teachers (K-12) and only 2 gyms, 1 pool, and 1 fitness room, scheduling spaces for PE can sometimes be tight. To make things a little easier each teacher is slotted pool time several weeks back to back where they will teach all of their aquatics classes for the year. Unfortunately for my students, my time slot happened to fall directly after Covid struck at the beginning of Online Learning. Needless to say my students were very bummed out by this, but fortunately we were still able to have a "pool experience."

Though it was only for the last 3.5 weeks of school I was thrilled to be able to see my students in person to wrap up the year. I was very limited in the types of activities that students were allowed to do as they had to avoid sharing equipment and having direct physical contact, so naturally disc golf felt like a great fit. Then one day as I was discussing with other teachers how we could effectively slot out gym time for classes I made a joke about how it would be cool to be able to use the drained pool for PE. Surprisingly my head of department loved the idea and went ahead and talked to the Aquatics Director to see if it would be a reality. Thankfully our Aquatics Director was thrilled at the idea as well and helped me formulate my pitch to admin to address any concerns that might arise. It took a little bit of convincing at first but eventually my principal hopped on board to make this a reality.

When it came time for my first classes to have PE in the pool they were very confused to be lining up by the locker rooms as if they were going to be swimming. Then once I explained that they would still get to go in the pool this year the look of confusion on their faces quickly changed to excitement. While in the pool I had students work with 1-2 partners to play through the 9 hole disc golf course that I had set up, making sure that students all started spaced out at different holes and didn't share discs or ipads. I set up colored cones on the ground to indicate where to start each hole and had a key on the pools 2 whiteboards indicating which color aligned to each hole. Then, after playing each hole students would to to the side of the pool and 1 student would record their scores on a scorecard in Seesaw. Students also made sure to stay INSIDE the pool at all times, leaving all stray discs that flew up on the deck to me and the other aquatics staff. Everyone (myself included) ended up having an absolute blast and we all felt super cool to be making ICS history as the only classes to ever step foot in the drained pool.

 

 (Seesaw Scorecard)