BROOKINGS — Physical education teacher Ken Tiefenthaler loves what he does so much that he’s been doing it for 33 years now — but it’s his special bond with generations of Brookings-area kids that has truly kept him in the game.

“I’ve always enjoyed kids, and I’ve always been pretty good at sports — and so, combine those two and I thought, ‘Yeah, OK, I can do that,’” he said in a recent interview with the Brookings Register at Mickelson Middle School.

Tiefenthaler’s dedication hasn’t gone unnoticed, either: He earned recognition in November as South Dakota’s Middle School Physical Education Teacher of the Year, an award presented by fitness group SHAPE SD. Among its benefits was a $200 gift card, which could be used to select goods from an equipment catalogue US Games.

“I feel honored, blessed and … humble to be given this award that I feel that any one of our five P.E. teachers could get. So, I’m just truly blessed,” he said. He also thanked his administrators, colleagues and South Dakota State’s Tracy Nelson. “Without them, this award wouldn't be possible.”

Choices

Life might have taken him on a different path, were it not for an experience Tiefenthaler encountered at South Dakota State University, where he graduated from in 1990.

“When I first went to college, I didn’t know what I wanted to be. I was like, I was there to play football, I went to SDSU, but then you take this test — it’s a test that says, ‘This is what you should do with your life,’” he remembered. “And it says I should be a teacher. And I was like, ‘Yeah, I could try that. I’ll do that.’ So I went into education and I’ve never looked back.

“I’ve enjoyed my 33^rd year here at the middle school. … It’s the relationships that you build with teachers and the connections that you make with kids,” Tiefenthaler said. “I really enjoy the kids. If I didn’t enjoy teaching kids, then I’d be out of here.”

Teaching methods

Throughout his decades in physical education, he has also witnessed a lot of changes, including a greater portion of society becoming less familiar with and excited for activities that can break a sweat. So how does he overcome that obstacle? Well, he eases kids into the now-unfamiliar, and makes it familiar — and, above all, fun — for them.

“I get a thrill out of — see, P.E. for me is for everybody,” Tiefenthaler said. “It’s for the kids that enjoy it, and it’s for the kids that don’t enjoy it. To me, when I can get one of those kids that don’t enjoy P.E., when I can get those to success and have some fun at it, that’s what I like.”

Take football, for example.

“I was teaching some kids outside. Not your most gifted kids, physically, which is great, but they’re all in a group and they’re like, ‘I don’t like this. I don’t want to do this,’” he recalled. “That’s fine, but then when I start playing with them — because some kids are like, ‘Well, I don’t like football!’ And I say, ‘Well, do you know what football even is?’ ‘No.’

“‘I tell you what, you just take this football here’ — so I’ll say, ‘Set, hut! Take it. Just run that way!’ Because they got flags on, and the other kids will start chasing them. ‘Oh, that’s kind of fun!’ Then they’ll start giggling and laughing … they’re having fun, but yet they don’t realize that they’re playing the game, and then I’ll add more rules in later. Like, you can’t throw the ball when you’re ahead of the line of scrimmage or stuff like that. ‘Why can’t you do that?’ Well, that’s just a rule.”

Tiefenthaler continued, “You start with them as not knowing anything about football or not even caring about it, and then it’s like, ‘Ah, I do enjoy this!’ That’s what I enjoy — getting kids to enjoy something that maybe they didn’t think they would like.”

Being active important

While he relishes the successes, he also has no problem taking on challenges — including ones that encourage sedentary lifestyles and have come into more prominence with the advent of ever-greater technology in the form of the internet, social media and artificial intelligence.

“… With technology, the way it’s just booming and taking off, you still need to be active. You still need to get those kids out there,” Tiefenthaler said. “I had some kids (recently) say, ‘I’d rather be home.’ Doing what? ‘Oh, playing video games.’ The apathy that some of these kids have is like, and the laziness that some of these — we need to, that’s why we’re here.”

He noted that the P.E. curriculum is varied. “… We offer a lot of different things with our curriculum, and hopefully by the time they leave eighth grade they have found something that they can enjoy later on. Maybe that might be what gets them out of the house and into a physical environment or get out of that sedentary lifestyle, maybe have an active lifestyle.

“With eighth grade, we do golf, we do archery — we do more of these independent-type activities and so hopefully they can find something that they enjoy,” Tiefenthaler explained. “Our role, I think, with technology being the way it is, if we can find something that these kids can hang on to and maybe like down the road, that they can get off their butts.”

The power of words

He also shared some inspirational words for people aspiring to become physical educators.

“I think we have the best — and when I say we, our team of P.E. teachers — I think we have the best job in the school district,” Tiefenthaler said. “Build those connections and those relations with kids, and have fun with it. Life’s too short to not have fun, so have fun with it.”

In closing, he had warm words for his young charges, as well as for the community that he’s a part of.

“I think that our … Mickelson Middle School, we do some wonderful things here,” Tiefenthaler said. “We have good kids, we really do. I know some people think, ‘Well, the kids are getting so bad.’ They’re not. We have some good kids. We have good administration — and Todd (Foster)’s not in the room, so I can say this, we have a really good administration.”

He continued, “We have community support, we really do. We’re lucky to live in a community that supports us, education-wise. I’m lucky to have an administration that supports what we do as P.E. teachers, and I think we are lucky, I’m lucky, to work with the people that I work with. Mickelson Middle School is a positive as a whole for this community.”

— Contact Mondell Keck at mkeck@brookingsregister.com.