MISSOULA — MISSOULA - This week's One Class at a Time is Tyler Bowen, a health and PE teacher from Sentinel High School.
Bowen has one goal as a teacher — he wants to help his students learn how to make healthy choices.
“We’ve tried to take more of a health club model, because if people want to go exercise and they get a gym membership - they get to choose the type of activities they do," explained Bowen. "So, we’re trying to meet the kids where they are.”
In an effort to meet the kids at their level, Bowen is teaching a low-impact fitness PE class. He says it's a class for any student — coordinated or uncoordinated, athletic or unathletic.
Essentially, he wants to make PE more inclusive and help his students feel comfortable in a gym. He will use his $250 grant towards pocket masks that students can use when learning CPR, but he’ll also buy a new speaker to play some tunes during PE.
“We might be in the middle of a pickleball game and instead of just playing Pickleball in between points, they’re dancing around and enjoying the music, doing those types of things — so it gets a lot more of activity out of them," Bowen shared.
While Mr. Bowen’s low-impact fitness class was initially designed for students who might feel shy in a PE class — any student is welcome.
“They learn some really cool things and they learn skills that they can hopefully carry onto adulthood to continue to be active even after they graduate.”
One of Bowen's students shared with MTM that his [Mr. Bowen's] class "alone is a enough to fix a bad day."
Overall, Bowen is showing his students how to build healthy habits and giving any student the confidence to enjoy movement.