Five friendships from five PE teaching colleagues

This blog post narrates my cherished relationships with five PE teaching colleagues—Alan, Paul, Viv, Helen, and Lee—highlighting how these friendships have significantly influenced my personal and professional life.PE teaching has afforded me so many opportunities. I have worked my whole adult life in the PE teaching sector, providing for my family (as my partner, Marta has too) and, over the last ten years building a business that, I believe, has positively influenced many people in both the PE sector and beyond. Furthermore, this PE business has served my family and me well and we now have an “asset” (hate this word for the business) that can and will serve our customers and us well over the long term. I am deeply proud of this.

Beyond all of this, one of the glories of my experience as a PE teacher is the connections that I have made with other PE colleagues. There are so many! Sooooooo many!! And I will write about just five of these connections below.

This post is actually a dangerous one because it will exclude far more of these PE connections than it will include. I am going to write about 5 people below but, in reality, the “list” could be 1,005 people long because this has been my experience for the last 26 years.

PE teachers are an amazing breed. They are different! I really believe that. I enjoy working with PE teachers. I respect their values but, above all, I admire their bravery and their willingness to be early adopters and to take risks. This last point, in reality, has had an amazing impact on my life and my business and without it, I don’t think The EverLearner Ltd would exist anymore. I honestly believe that if I had followed the exact same behaviours in geography, science (which I teach too) or MFL (which I teach too), the business may not have grown as it has. Why? Because, in my opinion, PE teachers challenge the existing assumptions more than the average and are willing to take more risks,

So, to the five connections I want to tell you about. The list of five people below means a great deal to me. They are all PE teachers and they have all influenced me in different ways. They are:

• Alan
• Paul
• Viv
• Helen
• Lee

I am not including their surnames or specific details of their locations and roles because I want to ensure privacy but, all of these people are real and working in the PE sector now.

Alan

Alan and I worked together between 2005 and 2013. For much of that time, I was Head of PE and Alan was my second in a very large specialist sixth form in the South of England. We are four years apart in age and we share many of the same interests including racquet sports, football coaching and family.

Alan and I have worked together on so many projects that I couldn’t possibly list them here. We even started a very small business together in 2009, the first time I had ever worked in freelance or self-employed formats whilst being a teacher.

Like many PE teacher partnerships, Alan and I have shared (and still do) many social times together as well as hotel rooms all over Europe whilst on sports tours, been on hundreds of sporting fixtures together and even created and developed (along with others) our own football club that actually achieved really great things and reached step 5 of the football pyramid within four years of existence.

These days, Alan and I talk regularly, go for the occasional pint and help each other when we have problems. When a child or a parent is ill or when we are stressed about work, we talk and we listen.

Alan is a lifelong friend but, in 2017, I thought I had broken that friendship. As myPEexam was transitioning to The EverLearner Ltd, I advertised for PE teachers to join us full time and I encouraged Alan to apply. I put together a process, which I now look back at and wince about and, bluntly, someone else performed magnificently within our process and became the number 1 choice of our selection team at the end of the process. We offered the job to this person (who then worked with us for three years) and I had to tell Alan no. It was tough. Alan, as you can imagine, was super professional about it. He listened and accepted but he also fed back and he was right with his observations about the opportunity we had provided and the process we had built.

For some months after that experience, there was far less conversation between Alan and I and, honestly,  I thought I had broken our relationship. But, no. As time passed, we came back stronger than ever and now, I believe, have a friendship and colleagueship which is unbreakable.

Alan, I still owe the kids a homemade pizza from the new pizza oven in the garden. Let’s organise it!

Paul

I started to get to know Paul around 2014. At that time, I was beginning to post my video tutorials to the internet and share them via social media spaces such as Twitter. Then and even more so now, Paul had a massive social media following as a result of the amazing work he was doing on his website and resource-sharing platform (not the one with the awful reputation for taking money out of people’s accounts… the other one!). I remember a tweet that Paul wrote before I even knew his name. I had posted a video tutorial –the tenth one or so that week– and Paul wrote “This is amazing. I’m going to have to keep an eye on you!” or words to that effect (I tried looking for the actual post but I couldn’t find it; perhaps someone else can). Anyway, it gave me an amazing boost that this person behind this big social media presence was recognising my work.

I seem to remember that we shared a Zoom call at some point in 2015 and then began to keep in touch via WhatsApp. Later in 2015, I was asked to do some authoring for the BBC and I was asked to recommend others and I suggested Paul. Therefore, we met in Salford at Media City and did some project work together.

Then in 2016, I presented at a conference in Durham and Paul, who lives just north of Newcastle, met me for dinner and we basically hit it off. We ate and laughed and were silly. It was great.

From there, Paul and I met in Sheffield in 2018, along with another prominent online PE figure, and we spent 24 hours together, eating, drinking and just chewing the fat. It was great. The night ended with a plate of cheesy chips and a stagger back to the hotel before returning home the next day.

These types of get-togethers happened over and over and, every time I was as close as Leeds, Carlisle, Durham or Stockton, we would meet up for dinner.

These days, Paul is a very close friend and I care about him a very great deal. I have known him as a single guy, as a newly-wed, as a new dad and through numerous professional transitions too. All of this from simply getting to know one another through the online PE community.

Paul, we’re due to speak face to face (in person or online) in October. I can’t wait!

Viv

Viv is one of my PE heroes. Weirdly, I don’t actually remember our first interactions. Do you, Viv? Put bluntly, Viv is a brilliant PE scientist. Her degree is in human physiology and I have leant on her no end for high-quality conversations about scientific rigour and what it should mean in PE. Viv teaches biology as well as PE including A-level biology. We chat all the time on the phone and via WhatsApp and I often ask her to validate a scientific claim I am making or refuting in an attempt that I don’t end up looking daft online.

Over lockdowns, Viv and her husband Matt put on Sunday evening quiz events on Zoom and my family and I got stuck into them. It was a lot of fun.

Viv is one of those –how shall I put it?-- supermums! Do you know the ones I mean? She works her socks off, she raises her family and she is constantly busy!! She talks at 100 mph and every word means something. She is such a proud parent!! I often receive little video clips and photos and Viv and I share things.

I’ve got to know Matt too. He’s a legend. A surfer, a sportsman, a really bright fella. He’s the full package and his company and mine worked together on a project in 2021.

Finally, Viv is the most honest person I know. I want to be clear about the nature of honesty that I get exposed to all the time with Viv: professionally honest. Viv has watched hundreds of my tutorials and fed back to me on them. She knows that I want honesty and she is happy to provide it. Viv tells me straight when things aren’t right and I love her to bits (professionally) for it.

Viv, the four of us need to get out for that posh dinner we always talk about. It needs to happen! I can’t wait.

Helen

Helen is one of my role models. She is a PE teacher, a traveller, a mum and a family person. She is constantly and endlessly optimistic. I started to get to know Helen better over lockdown. Helen was working in a very large Asian country at the time and was teaching at a British international school. Meanwhile, she had recently become a mum.

I only knew Helen via email and a few messages and then a Twitter direct-message exchange occurred and I realised that she was in a tough spot. It’s not my place to describe Helen’s circumstances but lockdowns where she was were particularly strict and –one could argue– quite threatening and this was playing very heavily on Helen’s mind as a new mum. I received from Helen what could only be described as a distressing communication and I wanted to help. Obviously, help in these times was not very practical so I simply kept in touch, listened and tried to be supportive. Helen and I got to know one another better and there was mutual respect.

Gradually, things got better where Helen was based and she and her family ultimately moved on to another part of the world where, I believe, Helen is happy and flourishing.

One of my memories of Helen is that, despite her going through a really tough experience, she offered to record a broadcast with me about the return to teaching with COVID measures in place in the school. Schools had bounced back a little sooner than occurred in Europe and Helen shared her thoughts with everyone who wished to listen. This was a heroic act, in my opinion. Just a Zoom call, maybe! But off the back of what she had been through it was amazing.

Helen, it’s been too long. We must catch up.

Lee

Where do I start with Lee? Ok, I’ll start here: after getting to know one another throughout 2021 and 2022 through a series of projects, Lee invited me to a Premier League football match where he had been given two tickets to hospitality for the game vs my favoured team, Nottingham Forest. It was a super kind gesture. I met Lee at the Premier League football ground in West London and we shook hands and went in the escalator to be met with complimentary champagne followed by an amazing three course meal. Drinks flowed. I mean, they really flowed! Unfortunately, Forest lost the match 2-1 but it was a great game and Lee and I had a brilliant afternoon. On my way home, I realised that I was very, very drunk. Probably the first time I had been drunk for well over a decade and maybe two. I’m talking about “family wedding drunk”, if you know what I mean. I ended up getting the wrong train home and I found myself all dazed and confused in Basingstoke train station before finally getting home to Farnborough.

Lee wrote a really influential book about PE teaching in 2021. I read it and found it really interesting and, later that year, I interviewed Lee for my podcast before hosting Lee and others for the first and only debate project experience that has ever occurred in the PE sector. Lee debated a well-respected PE colleague about the role of conceptual learning in physical education. The debate was really informative and the feedback from the community was incredible. However, to be honest with you, I have quite a few regrets about it and I felt that I had let numerous people down as the chair of the event. The debate was far more tense than I should have allowed it to be and there was some upset afterwards on, pretty much, all sides. Lee was a bit upset with me and he had a point. However, it was this that strengthened our friendship because we spoke about it and were honest with one another. We ended up laughing about it and learning a great deal in the months that followed and I really value this aspect of Lee’s approach to life.

These days, Lee and I are confidantes. Often the chats we have go no deeper than the weekend’s fixtures but we also talk about really fundamental aspects of life. I really value Lee’s opinions and, to be blunt, I see a great deal of potential in him. I ask him his opinion, at times, on the biggest parts of my life and I trust his insights. I also trust Lee and his discretion.

Going back to the opening paragraph about Lee, I also met his dad during that Saturday afternoon Premier League fixture. What a gent! What a gem! He was so kind to me and I still need to repay this somehow.

Lee, I know we’ll be chatting very soon but let’s get the next get together arranged asap!

So, there you have it. Five people who I value very, very greatly in the PE sector. Honestly, I could have written about hundreds of you as the types of relationships described above go far beyond five people.

I simply want to say to every PE teacher that I work with and get to know whether on the phone, a Zoom call or in person, I absolutely love it! And, perhaps, more importantly, I love the PE sector and all the support and positivity it has brought me.

Have a lovely day.

James