Tyler Kuehl (11) is a P.E. teacher at Pacific Trails Middle School who was recently awarded San Diego County’s Middle School P.E. Teacher of the Year. Although Kuehl loves his job because of the games and outdoor activities he leads for students, he clarifies that there’s more to it than that. “A lot of P.E. teachers get a bad rap of just rolling the balls out,” he said. “I really wanted to change that.”
He has put his whole heart into teaching and has transformed P.E. into so much more than just fun and games. To Kuehl, physical education is an opportunity to not only add fun to middle school students’ daily routine but also to support them when they can be feeling their most vulnerable.
Kuehl has always been interested in pursuing a career in teaching and loves being around kids. He started off wanting to be an elementary school teacher.
At PLNU, he was on the baseball team and gained a lot of support from his teammates and coaches over the years. When he was trying to find what career path he wanted to take, many of his friends and teammates stepped in to help guide him.
After graduating, he tried becoming a firefighter or an EMT but found that he didn’t have a passion for those jobs. He worked for Bai, a new drink company, for one year before deciding to start learning more about teaching P.E. His friend, Sean Sand (09), a tennis player at PLNU asked Kuehl to come watch him teach a P.E. class at an elementary school near campus.
Here, he discovered that he wasn’t suited for teaching elementary school, but was still drawn to Physical Education. He got the chance to watch a Middle School P.E. class and loved it, so he began pursuing his masters and got his teaching credentials.
When he first applied to be a P.E. teacher for Roosevelt Middle School in Vista, he walked into his interview and realized that he recognized his interviewer. By asking a few questions, he learned that he was Sean Sand’s father, Kirby Sand. That connection helped him make an impact in the interview and Kuehl was hired.
Kuehl soon discovered that there were many Roosevelt Middle School students that struggled academically and needed extra encouragement and engagement.
“It was a great place, but there were a lot of low income students there, and a lot of students didn’t care about their grades,” he said. “I really had to focus on my classroom management and make my lessons very engaging.”
Kuehl came up with “superhero workouts,” each one being inspired by a popular comic book movie character. He hoped that these workouts would engage his students in a fun, unique way.
“The Hulk would be upper body, the Flash would be high intensity, the Wonder Woman workout had lasso lunges,” he said. “I decided to make some superhero videos and created a YouTube page. All of my students were able to see all of these 5-minute workouts during Covid.”
These videos were the reason why Kuehl was selected for his job in Del Mar at Pacific Trails Middle School.
“The interviewer called me and said, ‘I saw your YouTube page, that’s what leaned us into our decision to hire you.’”
With his experience at Vista, Kuehl was ready to jump right into the job. Learning the names of his students is just one of the ways that Kuehl has differentiated his P.E. classes from the rest.
“My biggest focus every year is to know my student’s names,” Kuehl said. “It’s a simple task, but I have to learn around 250 names, and it’s really hard. But when you say a student’s name, they’re stunned that you know their name and see and value them. Knowing their name is the only way they’re going to respect you, listen to you, and put their guard down and do what you say.”
Kuehl’s students have the opportunity to learn about more than just exercise — they learn important life skills as well.
“At Pacific Trails, every Monday, we do a social, emotional learning lesson,” he said. “They don’t dress out, they go into the classroom. We talk about hard topics and get really vulnerable. We talk about stress, healthy and unhealthy relationships.”
Kuehl assigns a project to the students that is called the gratitude project. The students choose a person they’re thankful for and write them a letter. Then, they call the person and read the letter to them.
“They go to their stations looking super nervous, and come back with the biggest smile on their face, knowing that they just made someone’s day.”
Kuehl also believes that he should do any assignments that he assigns to his students as well. This is one of the many ways that Kuehl challenges the idea that P.E. teachers only set up games and activities and supervise them.
“Middle school is probably the most insecure time of anyone’s life,” he said. “Because of this, social and emotional health is so important.”
Even if they are playing a sport he isn’t very good at, Kuehl always joins the games and allows them to make fun of him.
“I tell my students that I’m joking 80% of the time. When they see you fail at something at their age and get insecure, you get to a different level with them. I’m always making fun of myself and I try to have them not take life too seriously.”
When Kuehl won the Middle School P.E. Teacher of the Year award he said that he couldn’t have done it without all of the people who inspired his lesson ideas. His father remains one of Kuehl’s biggest inspirations, as well as all the teachers who encouraged and motivated him.
“All of the P.E. teachers I learned from were a blessing. San Diego teacher of the year all credits to all of the teachers I’ve worked with throughout the years.”
