Thursday, September 28, 2017

Minnesota Adapted Physical Education Conference/Leadership Podcast

First, I want to apologize to my listeners, as I have been away from my podcasting and blogging duties for sometime now. I have another podcast, on working with speech and language therapist, that had some audio quality issues, which should be released soon as well. In my last episode, I discussed the idea that I wanted to create a few concept episodes focusing on specific disabilities. However, through the turbulent life of a person working on their dissertation, I ended up not being able to make that happen in a timely fashion. But I was given another opportunity to give you all an episode that focuses on an area that we in the world of APE do not get to focus much of our time on, professional development and leadership in APE. In this episode, I had the opportunity to sit down and have in-depth conversations with multiple experts who were somehow connected to the Minnesota Developmental Adapted Physical Education (DAPE) conference. In this episode I was able to meet with some DAPE members who discuss why they attend the DAPE conference every year.  In addition, I was also able to talk to two board members of the DAPE leadership committee, Mike Doyle and Jennifer Heebink, on why they decided to join the DAPE leadership and what their roles on the leadership committee. Lastly, we found out a little bit about the history of the DAPE conference. With listening to this podcast, it is my hope that (1) some of the listeners learn about the great things that are occurring at APE conferences and the impact of that leadership has on our field; and (2) that if you are in a state that does not have an APE conference of leadership, that you might consider developing one yourself or with a small group of other passionate APE teachers. 

This podcast is part one of a two part episode. In part two, we will have interviews with the two keynote speakers, Lara Brickhouse, the 2017 SHAPE APE teacher of the year; and Dr. Suzanna Dillon, my dissertation adviser :) and the president of the National Consortium for Physical Education for Individuals with Disabilities 


Resources
Please take a look at the DAPE website, as it has a bunch of resources for APE teachers!

They have also developed an amazing document that covers all sorts of topics on APE and gives ideas
on best practices within APE. It is called the Minnesota DAPE BEST PRACTICE Operational Guide.