Welcome back to the career paths within education series!
Last time we highlighted one of our professors in special education, Beth Cutrer. We hope you learned a lot about the different careers in special education from that blog post, and today we hope you learn just as much about physical education. Many people have misconceptions when it comes to getting a degree in physical education. However, physical educators have just as much opportunity to grow and expand their careers as others do!
Today, we are highlighting Keven Prusak, physical education professor in the Teacher Education department at the McKay School. We are so blessed to have Keven here with us at BYU. After earning his own degree from BYU, he went on to truly improve the world of physical education. He redesigned elementary physical education programs, taught future physical educators, and created technology labs to help teachers evaluate their own teaching. Keven's awards list is quite extensive from being Teacher of the Year to winning exemplary paper honors. Learn more about Keven Prusak's career journey in the graphic below.
While learning about Keven's history in education, we also learned a lot about the need for physical educators. He shared with us the following: "A lot of people overlook us in Physical Education here and in the school setting themselves. You know, ‘oh, it’s just physical education. How hard could it be to teach PE?’ Well, it’s very hard. To be a very good physical educator is very demanding in terms of the pedagogy, in terms of the wear and tear it is on your body, in terms of the variety of skills that we do and in knowledge we convey to the students. It’s very demanding. It doesn’t often get recognition that perhaps it deserves... I think probably the greatest quality we look for in new teachers and teacher candidates is an absolute enthusiasm for working with kids, for developing young minds and bodies. If you have the notion that you really want to work with kids, teaching is the place to be."
We invite you to check out the other posts in our career path series!