A new program designed to bring special education and general education students together through sports has been introduced to our campus this year. The program, called Unified PE, is taught by special education teacher, Alysa Elkins, and physical education teacher, Kyle Smith.
Unified PE was brought to Westview out of inspiration from Westview’s past participation in Special Olympics events, where students in special education from various schools gathered at a host high school to play group sports. The only problem was that they occurred infrequently throughout the year.
“We are trying to push these programs into school on a daily basis versus a once-a-year kind of thing with the Special Olympics activities,” Elkins said. “Instead of one big event, we’re doing it daily on campuses district wide.”
With Unified PE’s integration into all of PUSD’s high schools, students will have the chance to experience the same sense of teamwork more often and to work towards it every day.
“This program is districtwide,” she said. “This is just the first year that Westview is doing it. Other schools have been doing it for a few years already.”
The program pairs students in the special education program with general education peers to learn, practice, and compete in different sports throughout the school year like soccer and kickball.
“Unified PE is a 1-to-1 pairing of a peer and a student in special education,” Elkins said. “One school will host an event, for instance, Del Norte is hosting soccer. Our students are going to learn certain skills related to soccer, and we’re going to practice playing games before we go to the event. Then in October, the plan is we can get a crew going to compete.”
For now, the program is interlinked with racket sports until enrollment in Unified PE is higher and Elkins says they have a fun daily schedule.
“The students in special ed in my class come over and meet their peers, then we walk down to the track,” she said. “We partner or group up and then we do a walk and talk around the track. We practiced skills that would lead up to a game like soccer or basketball. The peers are important because they help these students learn skills and provide encouragement in a friendly atmosphere.”
The goal of the class is to strengthen peer relationships. Each student in the special education program is paired with a general education student, allowing them to work together and help each other in developing athletic abilities.
“Bonding through sports is what I see as the purpose of Unified PE,” Elkins said. “A lot of students in special education have communication difficulties which makes it harder to make friends, but they do enjoy sports. So how I see it, it’s like making a connection through sports. Since the class has started, I’ve seen first hand the relationships that are forming and it makes me happy that we are able to bring students together that otherwise wouldn’t have classes together.”
Additionally, accessibility and inclusion are important to the program. Adaptive equipment, such as gait trainers and walkers, allows students with mobility challenges to participate in sports.
“We did get to observe [Unified PE] at Del Norte,” Elkins said. “It was a track and field event and it was very inclusive. Students [who] couldn’t necessarily run hurdles were participating in their walkers or in their wheelchairs. While practicing soccer skills at our school, some of the students actually can get out of their wheelchairs and they practice skills in gait trainers and walkers. We also adapt equipment to help, for example, using tennis rackets and spikeballs instead of using bats and baseballs.”
The program is currently offered as a one-term course that provides the extra five units of PE credit, giving students an alternative to traditional PE classes.
“If you’re looking for a more social and leisurely PE experience that helps students with disabilities, this is the class for you,” Elkins said. “It is a one-term class [currently], but I’m hoping that they’ll offer it for two semesters next year. A lot of students don’t necessarily like a super-rigorous PE class, and I think this would be a good class for them because you could get to know students without the pressure of having to run a timed mile.”
Enrollment this fall was 13 peer students, although the program’s goal is to eventually pair every student in special education with a general education student.
“I think the students in the class genuinely seem to be having fun,” Elkins said. “Right now, we don’t have enough students for a stand-alone Unified PE course so currently we’re connected to racket sports. We’re not quite at a 1-to-1 pairing yet. We have a really good group of students, and it seems to me that they genuinely want to be there.”
Elkins said the program also helps students get past social barriers and misinformation about disabilities. Many people are getting the opportunity to interact in a meaningful way with peers in special education for the first time.
“I think people might be hesitant to interact with our students because maybe they don’t necessarily know how to interact with students with communication barriers,” she said. “What I find really fun is when general ed peers can see that our students in special education are fun, have awesome personalities, and great senses of humor. People might have an idea about a student because of their disability, but once they get to know them, they get to know their personality, not make assumptions based on their disability. I feel like this is breaking a barrier, and I think it’s a good way to kind of remind ourselves that people are people, they’re not disabilities. Everyone is different.”
