5-2-1-0 Spotlight: Cory Arensdorf

Irving Elementary (Waterloo) Physical Education Teacher, Cory Arensdorf, is a 5-2-1-0 champion. He has an incredible passion for teaching children that began at a young age, and he has carried it through his time as an educator. Cory has won the Healthiest State Initiative’s K-12 School Award twice, been a finalist for the Individual category once, and his fresh approach to physical education is an inspiring way to teach kids about their body, and to build a stronger foundation for healthier choices in the future.

Cory began his college education expecting to be a classroom teacher, but his first taste of classroom experience taught him it might not be for him. “When I did my first field experience classes I was sitting there and I realized…I need to move! I was as antsy as the kids are!” Cory said. “I like to move, I like to learn and move, I think that’s a beautiful combination [...] that's where I needed to be.”

When Cory transitioned into physical education, he started his career with P.E. lessons and activities many people would be familiar with including full games of basketball, dodgeball, etc. As he got more experience however, he realized there was much more to physical education than layups and touchdowns.

His lessons wove concepts like Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and the Crucial C’s (Courage, Capable, Count, Connect) into the games he played with his students. Topics including social awareness, managing emotions, and self-confidence were included with traditional health lessons like how our body handles nutrients and how the heart works. To do this, he created “Initiative 360” by working with the Mental Health Coordinator at his school.

This initiative began as “Movement in Math” lessons for teachers who were struggling with teaching certain subjects to distracted or antsy kids. “I thought if they incorporated movement into it, it would lead to better learning.” Cory said.

From there, the entire school adopted 15–20-minute SEL lessons to start the day that incorporated different mindfulness activities and therapeutic strategies like yoga or breathing exercises with physical activity. A particular favorite was “Superhero Yoga”, where students could dress up as their favorite heroes and do different yoga poses. Cory created a PowerPoint activity guide for the school to use, including pictures of students from all grade levels so friends could recognize each other, further adding to the fun of the morning.

“It was neat how the kids and teachers responded to it,” he said. “There were positives and negatives, kids loved doing it and were engaged but some teachers weren’t used to having to calm kids down from physical activity right away. We realized, okay maybe some of the lessons are TOO active, we adjusted it, and teachers appreciated that,” he joked.

When a wider initiative, Second Step, was introduced district wide the following year, Cory helped create movement lessons to sprinkle into more classes throughout the day.

His efforts didn’t stop in the classroom, they spread to the gym as well. In his P.E. classes these same ideas of mindfulness, courage, and self-confidence were woven into lessons.

“The kids were so much more engaged in the lesson because they were feeling good about themselves.”

“Teaching them how to feel capable, how they count, how to connect with others, how to have courage in life. I noticed once they started learning and applying those, I had less issues with classroom management, less issues with them not getting along, with putting them in a group they don’t want to be in and then not participating, so then they found their feeling of the P.E. class being a safe environment and the entire class became so much more engaging.”

Cory created a flier club, to work with kids to establish goals to improve mental health when they weren’t feeling good about themselves, and he tweaked the familiar P.E. games to feature a well-being lesson beyond playing to win a game. One game, Pac-Man, where students dribble a basketball on the lines of the gym and avoid being tagged, became Heart Line Dribble, where the lines represent the arteries and dribbling is the heartbeat. Students had to deliver nutrients (bean bags) to different organs and muscles (hula hoops). The ghosts players avoid became heart disease and “sometimes foods” like ice cream and chicken nuggets.

While he still teaches sports and some of the skills within them, he doesn't teach them in a traditional way. Kids learn to dribble and pass in basketball but rarely play full games. Cory found (and many of us might know from our own experience) that kids wouldn't interact if they didn't enjoy the support or if they weren't competitive or aggressive. He changed his philosophy to teach about the heart and nutrition through educational games. About oxygen flow to the brain, white blood cells, fighting off germs, all by connecting the game to a lesson about why exercising makes you healthier.

This type of focus on a physical or mental health lesson elevates that daily movement break for Cory and his students. “The more I can teach them, the more they learn about nutrition and their bodies, the better they will be about going out and actually doing those things. My goal is not to teach them how to be the best at football or basketball, or how to play sports, I want you to learn about physical activity and movement in a way you like,” he said. “I want the kids that like the sports to enjoy them and play them when they're older, but I also want the kids that hate basketball to find the niche they like.”

The reaction from students has inspired him to keep innovating, particularly from those that moved schools, then came back later. Cory was scared the kids would say he teaches too much, and they don’t get as much physical activity as their old P.E. class, their reaction was the opposite. His returning students missed his style of lessons. “To hear him say that was inspiring, you think that's all the kids want but it's not.”

Of course, his work goes beyond a lecture about heart disease, it’s about more than teaching.

His focus, and advice to other educators, is simple; build relationships with the kids.

“If you build relationships with them, they’ll do anything you want them to do. If they know you care about them, they trust you. They know they are important to me and all I want is for them to grow,” Cory said. “Build relationships first, worry about the teaching later.”