Home- College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
- Dr. Margaret Crickenberger
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Margaret Crickenberger
Then we had Steve Klesius, who had been at LSU and had experience with children with learning disabilities. He and Dr. Bowers produced a series of 15 videotapes which were distributed through state departments of education to be shown to K-12 teachers to help them provide appropriate physical education activities for students with disabilities.
I can’t begin to tell about your many achievements as you have become a USF Distinguished University Professor Emeritus. One of the major things that you did was create playground equipment for children with disabilities across the country. You and Dr. Klesius hired one of my first students on a grant, Bill Price. He was tremendously talented at developing equipment and activities for children with disabilities. Bill joined you and Steve to make tremendous contributions to adapted physical education programs for students with disabilities. Chuck Smith, Steve, Bill, and you have all written books, conducted workshops, and served as officers in state and national organizations.
There was Bob Beasely, an exercise physiologist. He wasn’t particularly popular with his students when he made them run the track, but he helped them achieve personal fitness for their teaching.
Pat Tanner then joined us. Marge Hanson, our national director in physical education, was a close friend of mine, and I asked her if she knew anyone who could teach movement education for us. She said, “I certainly do,” and recommended Pat Tanner. Pat Tanner made a tremendous difference in our program of physical education teacher preparation. The Movement Education Program, which focuses on force, flow, time and space, uses the Socratic method of asking children can you do this, can you do that, which puts the response on what the child can do and not on comparing them to anyone else. It starts with direction of movement of the child’s body parts and becomes increasingly more challenging. We can never thank Pat Tanner enough for identifying Jane Young as a dance teacher for our program. She was a wonderful teacher who brought so much to our program.
Herman Weinberg then joined us and focused on middle school grades physical education. He has written several books in that area and was an early continuous leader nationally in the development of the middle school curriculum in physical education. Dr. Dianne Hall came the same year and gave us a specialist in high school physical education, who was a woman. She later was instrumental in developing our Wellness Leadership Program, which has been so successful.
The major thing I would like to say is that this program of physical education teacher preparation was and still is unique in the country. We have had many visitors to our program over the years who wanted to see what and how we were doing things. Lou, you told me of one visitor who said she was surprised that we did not take a vote on issues at our faculty meetings, but reached a consensus after a long discussion. I have to say this is one of the things which made our program so successful. Not only was the faculty the kind of people with the foresight to join our faculty, but every faculty member had a say in choosing who would be invited to join us. We didn’t pay attention to what other departments or colleges were doing, we only paid attention to our students and how they were doing. We constantly focused on our students and the support to make them better teachers.
That’s about the end of my story, and I appreciate having the opportunity to be able to share it and for being able to be at USF for a large part of my career.
LB: Margaret, thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences with us. The one large area you left out due to modesty was the role you played in bringing us all together and steering us during those years the program was forming. What the program became was to large degree due to your influence and great efforts. Again, I thank you, and I’m sure our students are thankful to you as well.
MC: Well, I miss them. I miss my students.
End of Interview