SPECTRUM COLLEAGUES
Rudy Mueller
Deceased
East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, East Stroudsburg, PA, USA
Rudy Mueller, a longtime colleague and friend died in 2002, eight years after Muska. He wrote several remembrances in Muska: A Biography of Dr. Muska Mosston (1995). The one that captured Rudy’s feelings about and the impact of Muska on his life is quoted here.
“I felt I was the most privileged person in the world to be associated with Muska in the decade of the 1960s. I saw him at his creative best, designing models, concepts and ideas that would influence physical education and education into the new millennium. We sat for hours in a local deli (near Rutgers University) drinking cup after cup of coffee, writing on napkins, and discussing and giving shape to all the concepts he had floating around in his head.
I thoroughly enjoyed these years with Muska. He was responsible for my professional growth and the clarification of my commitment to help teachers become more conscious and deliberate about their impact on student learning. It was as a result of this commitment that I remained a professor at East Stroudsburg University in PA where the Spectrum of Teaching Styles has been securely embedded in the physical education teacher preparation curriculum since the early 1970s.”
In fact, Rudy and Muska remained best of friends throughout the remainder of their lives. Muska was Rudy’s best man at his marriage to Sue in 1981 and they all continued to present together about the Spectrum of Teaching Styles into the early 1990s.
In his doctoral dissertation, Rudy created a four-part, sequential, conscious and deliberate teaching model that was inspired during his early years with Muska. The Spectrum of Teaching Styles was and still is the center piece for the third part in which East Stroudsburg University teacher education candidates design and practice teaching physical education lessons that incorporate the Spectrum Styles. During the fourth part in student teaching, candidates must demonstrate that they can independently plan and teach units and lessons that match student learning outcomes with the appropriate styles from the Spectrum.