PE kayaking 2022

Mr. Kuecker was one of Algona’s PE teachers last year. This year he switched to special education. Mrs. TerHark is back to having a full time teaching job after being retired for two years. When she taught at AHS two years ago, she was a business teacher and Algona’s athletic director. TerHark is the PE teacher for first semester this year.

To start the year, when everyone was still getting their schedules changed, TerHark took her classes out onto the football field to play ultimate frisbee. After everyone was settled in their classes, she took them to Call Park to play disc golf. She put people in groups and had them keep score to make it a little more competitive. The PE classes went out to Call Park for two weeks and played two rounds of disc golf. This took a lot of planning on TerHark’s part, as she had to line up buses, put groups together, and make sure everyone had a good time. 

After disc golf, Mrs. TerHark got her classes out to Smith Lake to kayak and canoe. Each class got to get out on the water twice. Again, she had to line up a bus to drive her students to and from Smith Lake. Billie Wille was kind enough to let AHS’s PE classes use the Nature Center’s kayaks and canoes. A few classes had some incidents while out on the lake. There were a few students who fell out of their kayaks, there was a sunken kayak, and there were students who came back to school wet. Lauren McLaughlin, a student in PE right now, said, “Falling in and getting splashed was fun.”

Recently, PE classes have started yard games. They have played cornhole, spikeball, ladder golf, and can slam. After yard games, TerHark is planning on having her classes go fishing, play flag football, and play volleyball to finish the semester.