Williamsburg Community School District Health and P.E. teacher Mickey Hines ’20 traded his red and white gear for Cornell purple as he returned to his alma mater with a bus-load of students on Oct. 2.
Associate Professor of Kinesiology Lewis Kanyiba and students in his Block 2 course, Elementary Methods of Physical Education, welcomed the visiting group at the Small Athletic and Wellness Center (the SAW).
While the Cornellians awaited the yellow school bus’s arrival from their 50-minute trip to the Hilltop, Kanyiba shared a few thoughts with his class.
“I hope you get inspired by Mickey,” Kanyiba said. “You can see what students do when they leave here. His passion is off the charts.”
Hines, who teaches 7th–12th grade health and P.E. at Williamsburg Jr-Sr High School, was recently recognized as the 2025-26 Iowa High School P.E. Teacher of the Year by SHAPE (Society of Health and Physical Educators) Iowa. He says his classes at Cornell set him up for success.
“Cornell definitely got me prepared for being in the moment and the everyday aspect of being a teacher, and also taught me how to be a professional,” Hines said. “My professors and coaches here cared for me. So I wanted to do the same thing. And, I care for my students. I care so much about these kids, which is awesome.”
Hines’ Cornell connections are exactly how the campus visit came to be. Kanyiba and Hines saw one another at the SHAPE convention this past summer.
“I was like, ‘Hey, can we work together this year?’ He said, ‘I don’t see why not!’ And boom, green light from there,” Hines said. “This is all about letting Lewis’ students apply their adaptive P.E. knowledge to teach students with disabilities and teach students with adaptive needs. I’m really excited for my students to learn from somebody else instead of seeing my face every day.”
The Cornell kinesiology students planned everything for the visiting junior high students based on what they studied in class–structuring lessons and evaluations. The morning was filled with an adapted game of tag, a parachute activity, a dance exercise, and basketball with larger hula hoops as the basket. The Williamsburg students expressed their feelings through movement, worked as a team, got exercise, and had fun socializing with the Cornell students.
“As much as this is fun, we also want to teach them some basic motor skills,” Kanyiba said. “The biggest takeaway for my class is actually being able to organize a class and instruct it. Because this is our home turf, they don’t have as many nerves. Students planned all the activities, instructed those activities, and we’re going to do a kind of evaluation at the end once they leave.”
As part of the class, the students are also individually placed in a K-8 public school for an entire week under an experienced health & PE mentor teacher for their practicum experience. Junior Shanelys Sanchez Robles ’27, a health and physical education major and dance minor from Puerto Rico, is the dance team captain of Cornell’s Spirit Squad. She and a partner developed the dance portion of the class for the visiting students.
“We thought it would be fun to incorporate dance as a way to make them know that sports—what’s typically thought of when doing physical activity—is not the only physical activity they can participate in to stay active and fit,” Sanchez Robles said. “They can incorporate dance and other rhythmic activities to express their emotions while also staying active. They seemed like they were having a lot of fun!”
Sanchez Robles said she also learned a lot from watching Hines interact with the students and seeing what he’s done with his career after Cornell.
“It’s my junior year, and now I’m starting to have practicums and all of that,” Sanchez Robles said. “So, I’m being exposed to real life after college, and it was nice to see an example of someone who is succeeding, currently. I just love seeing how what is learned inside the classroom translates into a job in real life. It gives me hope for the future.”
While the visiting students learned more about staying active in fun ways and Cornellians gained experience educating students, the smiles and giggles coming from everyone involved were the biggest indicators that the visit was a success.