MONMOUTH, Ill. – “Yes, you have a classroom, but your community is your entire school,” said Kari Shimmin, a professor in Monmouth College’s kinesiology department, who seeks to help her students think that way.
The process of learning to be a teacher presents many new challenges: how to lesson plan, how to manage a classroom, and how to form connections. However, being a teacher can offer new opportunities to be active in your community.
In her 24 years at Monmouth College, Shimmin, originally hired as the volleyball coach, found that she enjoyed teaching more than she had thought she would. So Shimmin pursued a master’s degree in sports management with an emphasis on pedagogy, so that she could teach P.E. teachers how to teach.
When working with her P.E. students, Shimmin isn’t just teaching them how to teach, but also the physical skills they need. These skills include activities such as juggling and hula-hooping.
“As physical educators, what is our community?” Shimmin said. “Our community, in the school, would be our students, the other faculty, it could be even the parents of the students. So how can we even connect with them in terms of that community and getting them to be more physically active?”
In order to aid in this thinking, Shimmin introduces her students to the local community with early hands-on experiences. One such class is Adaptive P.E.
Adaptive P.E. works with the Life Skills class at Monmouth-Roseville High School for students with disabilities. The students come to the college once a week during the fall semester and they learn how to be physically active in a variety of ways such as games, sports, and yoga.
Shimmin loves the course for the opportunity it offers her students. “They get a chance to work one-on-one with someone who has a disability, and you get to teach them to be physically active, which they enjoy doing,” Shimmin said. “They get to modify the exercises for them to be physically active. I really enjoy seeing my students just grow as a person in that class.”
Former student Karlie Drish (’22), a P.E. teacher at Sherrard Junior High School, who took Shimmin’s Adaptive P.E. class as a freshman, said, “I was able to start using those skills so early, to where now as a teacher I can recognize that I was already building that skillset. It’s not something that was completely new to me in my career today because I was able to get that early on.”
Other former students update her on how they are engaging with physical activity in their school communities beyond just their classes.
“I do have one of my alumnae, that does an [event] once or twice a year, invites all the faculty and parents to come in and have the opportunity to learn from their students on the activities that they’re doing,” Shimmin said. “It’s not just teaching the students; it’s teaching their families and the rest of the faculty.”
“I have another alumna that offers in the mornings for any faculty members that wants to come in and use the weight room,” Shimmin said. “He’s there and will help them, run them through some workouts. Or [he is] there for advice too. So, reaching out to more than just to their students.”
Shimmin’s active goal to connect her students with the community derives from her own personal passion for fitness and health.
“I get to know the physical educators in our area,” Shimmin said. “And I think that we all have the same mission—we want to see people live healthy lives and we want to teach people how to live healthy lives.”
Karen Fredrick - Contributing Writer