en-us Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved. Tue, 21 May 2013 11:02:52 GMT 15 By Lauren Nath
Health and physical education teacher Renee Campbell has been teaching at LVHS for 31 years, yet not many students know that much about her. Mrs. Campbell always knew she would be a physical education teacher. She knew it when she was 16, and she still loves teaching. “I wanted to teach physical education because I liked the activities. I was extremely active when I was younger and I wanted to teach the health part, which was my favorite class,” Mrs. Campbell said. In high school, she did not have a rewarding experience in physical education. She was not able to enjoy an entire 45 minutes of gym like the students do today. “There was no gym in my school growing up. You would walk down to a field, play baseball for 10 or 15 minutes and then walk back. The first time I had real physical education, I loved it,” Mrs. Campbell said. Physical education continued to be Mrs. Campbell’s primary field throughout college. She attended Penn State Altoona for one and a half years and then transferred to the main campus for the remaining two and a half years. The classes she had to take for her major included anatomy, advanced anatomy, physiology, advanced physiology, kinesiology, statistics, two math classes, English classes, speech class and education courses. She was also required to help teach physical education classes in college. Today, most college classes are worth three credits, but the physical education classes were only worth one, so physical education majors had to take more classes than normal to get the required amount of credits. Mrs. Campbell finished her college education with a bachelor’s degree in science and a master’s degree in health. In 1978 she was hired at Ligonier as the physical education teacher. “I was scared to death my first year. My biggest mistake was going in thinking I didn’t have to establish discipline before being friendly. I wasn’t strict enough. It took that year and part of the next year to be stricter,” Mrs. Campbell said. She still gets excited each year on the first day of school. “It is nice to see the kids again and how they have changed over the summer. Plus, you are ready to go because there was no stress over break,” Mrs. Campbell said. Throughout her years of teaching, Mrs. Campbell has witnessed a change in the teaching curriculum. Today, there are more rules and restrictions and paperwork. Also, physical education used to be a class the students took throughout the year. Three days a week would be health and the other two days would be gym. What Mrs. Campbell taught her students during the year would be comparable to an Anatomy I class in college. “You used to be able to get your blood checked and you’d learn your blood type and everything, but now we can’t because of the risk of spreading diseases like AIDS,” Mrs. Campbell said. Even with all the restrictions, Mrs. Campbell still makes physical education fun. Mrs. Campbell made up a game called six-base kickball. The game is just like normal kickball, but there are six bases instead of three. Also, people are allowed to pass each other when running around the bases and can have more than one person at a base at a time. It also happens to be Mrs. Campbell’s favorite physical education class activity, with indoor soccer following close behind. This game is also a big hit with her classes. “It was a phenomenal experience to play with six bases instead of three. It rocks my socks,” sophomore Rachel Kromel said. For as long as Mrs. Campbell has been teaching, it is not surprising that can easily pick her favorite and most embarrassing memories. “My favorite memory was when four girls I had taught went into the health field. Two of them became doctors and the other two became physical therapists. They came back to the school and thanked me because I had helped them to be ahead in college from what I taught them,” Mrs. Campbell said. Mrs. Campbell actually has two embarrassing memories, but one is more awkward than embarrassing. “The most embarrassing thing was back when I taught gymnastics. You had to make up your own routine as part of your grade for the class. I was demonstrating on the vault, and my foot got caught. I ended up sliding three feet on the ground, and I had a brush burn on my whole face,” she said. Mrs. Campbell also gets embarrassed today whenever she tries to say a word and it ends up coming out a completely different word. One of her awkward memories was first teaching health. She had to get used to saying words that would not normally be said in an average conversation or in most other conversations. Mrs. Campbell practiced saying them in a mirror to be able to say them with a straight face. Mrs. Campbell is the favorite teacher of many students and will remain in that position for the rest of her career. Mrs. Campbell plans on teaching for around five more years at Ligonier. It looks like all her hard work, dedication and love for physical education has paid off. ]]> Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:53:57 GMT