Not your average jungle gym

Stone Mill teacher awarded for making every child a winner

Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Chris Rossi⁄The Gazette A third-grader at Stone Mill Elementary School makes like a sloth by hanging from a ladder under the watchful eyes of Carol Winckler, recently named the ‘‘Maryland Physical Education Teacher of the Year” for her innovative teaching style and commitment to physical education.

Physical education teacher Carol Winckler not only condoned his monkey business; she planned and encouraged it.

During a unique two-week ‘‘Rain Forest” program, she converts the gym into a world where students imitate the movements — and yelps — of tropical insects and animals. The goal is to help students improve their muscular strength while learning more about tropical environments.

Scooting between nearly two dozen learning stations via their ‘‘jeeps,” or four-wheeled scooters, students crawled like tarantulas along balance beams or hung like sloths from the rungs of a ladder, working their way along using hands and feet.

‘‘It feels like we’re learning about animals but it never gets boring,” said Ivy Zelvy, 8, of Rockville, as she balanced on overturned plastic cups at a station called the ‘‘Emerald Tree Boa Balance.”

The program is just one of several Winckler has devised over her 21 years of teaching physical education that aims at making every child perform like a winner.

‘‘This is not about competition, this is not game-oriented, it’s skill-oriented,” Winckler, 51, said. ‘‘Every child does their personal best. Everyone feels successful.”

That kind of philosophy has brought Winckler success as well, on both a personal and professional level.

On Friday, she was named ‘‘Maryland Physical Education Teacher of the Year” at the Maryland Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance awards banquet in Annapolis for her innovative classes and involvement in county, state and national organizations promoting physical education.

This school year, Stone Mill will serve as a ‘‘demonstration school” for physical education teachers wanting to visit her classes.

‘‘I’m so honored about the award, but serving as a demonstration school is even more important because that’s all about teaching the children,” Winckler said.

And her students apparently love that Winckler puts them first, even dropping by their after-school sports activities.

This week, each class at the school is honoring her with a skit, card or song to express appreciation for a gym teacher that greets each and every child by name and with a smile.

‘‘In a school filled with wonderful teachers, Carol is so special,” said Karen Gregory, assistant principal. ‘‘To walk into her classes is an experience. She fills them with fun and energy yet incorporates all the [curriculum-required] physical activities.”

While growing up on a 1,200-acre Illinois farm, Winckler said playing ice hockey, tag football, baseball and basketball with neighborhood kids and cousins instilled a love of movement.

‘‘I want all kids to know they can play games, that participating, not winning a game, is the important thing,” she said.

She earned a physical education degree at Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa in 1984 and was soon recruited by Montgomery County Public Schools. In 2001, she earned a master’s degree in the same field at Virginia Tech.

Winckler said she developed the rainforest program, along with two others called ‘‘Winter Wonderland” and ‘‘Blast from the Past,” with Debbie Summers, a physical education teacher at Monocracy Elementary School in Dickerson.

‘‘We go out to supper and just start jotting the ideas down,” Winckler said. ‘‘We feel learning involves the entire person...and movement supports interdisciplinary learning.”

That philosophy translates into students learning to do a somersault at the ‘‘Armadillo Roll” station, but also reading all about the animal on a poster. The program is tailored to each grade level, with reading and writing tasks required of older students.

At a station called ‘‘Slash and Burn,” Winckler encouraged a student to bat a ball off the top of a traffic cone. A poster at the station explains that with the passing of every second, another acre and a half of rain forest is cut down.

‘‘But we can also replant,” Winckler said, and asked the student to replace the balls on the cones. ‘‘We can always make things better, if we try hard enough.”