Amanda Love

Laurel Faculty Spotlight

Amanda Love, Physical Education Department Chair

For Amanda Love, who has been a teacher for 28 years (seven at Laurel!), her love for physical education (PE) was a result of the many sports she played growing up. “When other kids were going to summer camp, I went to sports camp and spent weeks playing basketball, soccer, and figure skating,” she recalled. Sports was a common theme for Ms. Love through middle and high school. In her senior year, she created and coached the school’s first 7th and 8th grade girls’ basketball team as her independent study. She then went on to play soccer at Georgetown’s School of Languages and Linguistics and later received her Masters in Curriculum Design in Physical Education. She has been teaching ever since!

At Laurel, PE* is required for Early Learners through Grade 8.

Mixed in with some of these sports units are other units that focus on social and emotional learning (SEL), teamwork, kindness, and sportsmanship.

~Amanda Love, Physical Education Department Chair

“While many of our units embrace traditional sports and games, the world of PE is changing and it is not what adults in our community may have experienced,” said Ms. Love. “Mixed in with some of these sports units are other units that focus on social and emotional learning (SEL), teamwork, kindness, and sportsmanship. We also focus on more lifelong activities like fitness, golf, flag football, cornhole, pickleball, badminton, biking, and new this year, archery.”

We also focus on more lifelong activities like fitness, golf, flag football, cornhole, pickleball, badminton, biking, and new this year, archery.

~Amanda Love, Physical Education Department Chair

Ms. Love says “Our department is unique in that we see kids over an extended number of years as they move through the divisions we teach. We focus a great deal on growth mindset—one of LCRG’s five pillars of resilience—starting with students in Early Childhood. In Kindergarten we ramp it up quite a bit and see ourselves as facilitators in our student’s journey. As students get older, we do a lot to infuse curriculum with activities and tenets of Project Adventure so that the foundations of growth mindset, challenge by choice, and self-care are touched on repeatedly”.

*See "Curricula & Faculty by Grade" for Physical Education in Laurel School's K-Grade 2, Grades 3-5, and Grades 6-8.