3 Students Awarded State Scholarships
Jensen Lassiter
Manchester University students received three of the six state-wide 2017 Jean Lee/Jeff Marvin Scholarships, which are awarded by IAHPERD (Indiana Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance). Mark Osmialowski, Paige Keller and Hunter Gaerte were the winners.
Each student has plans as to how they're going to use their scholarship money. "I will use this scholarship to split between books and tuition," Osmialowski said. Funding his tuition helps him reach his goals for the future. "My ultimate goal is to stay and coach collegiate football, but I would love to be able to teach physical education and health in a high school or middle school setting, while coaching high school football as well."
Keller also plans to use her scholarship money for textbooks and tuition. She looks forward to teaching in the future. "When I was a junior in high school, my English teacher asked us to journal for five minutes about what we thought was the biggest problem in the United States,” she said. “I chose to journal about obesity. Then, she explained to us we would be need to become experts on our topic by reading books, looking up information and forming an opinion, because at the end of the year we would be writing a research paper on our topic. The more I learned about the obesity epidemic, the more passionate I became about pursuing a career where I could impact people's health behaviors. I felt by becoming a teacher, I would have the ability to inspire my students to lead healthy lifestyles."
Gaerte hopes to lessen her student loans as well. "In a few years I hope to be teaching middle school, and coaching volleyball at the high school level," she said. Gaerte wasn't exactly sure what she wanted to teach at the beginning of her college career. "I started off as an English education and a psychology double major,” she said. “I wanted to teach and counsel in a school. I quickly learned that English was not my strong suit. I knew I wanted to teach; I just didn't know what. One of my family members brought up physical education and I had never thought about it. I've always been super passionate about sports, health and fitness. It kind of clicked then."
ESAT has many program benefits, such as specialized hands-on experience. This gives students extra practice in their career field as they advance. "The best part of my major has been my PEP (Physical Education Program) labs,” Keller said. “The first lab was one where I got to teach homeschooled students in grades 4th-8th and the second lab the students were K-3rd grade. These labs were a great experience because they really pushed me outside of my comfort zone.
“It was the first time I created a lesson plan and the first time I taught a lesson to students,” she continued. “I was really nervous at first because all my peers were standing around watching and making notes of feedback to give me. However, everyone was in the same boat and encouraged one another throughout the process. It was neat to build relationships with the students and earn their respect."
Osmialowski agrees. "My major has so much hands-on experiences involved that I feel like I have an advantage on other physical education majors from other schools,” he said. “The homeschool lab has made the transition to teaching so much more easier, and it is a fun learning experience as well."