Starting this year, Westview is rolling out a new opportunity for both general ed and special ed students to make new connections and fulfill their ENS credits – Unified PE. While the Westview leg of the program is still in its fledgling stages, it already shows incredible promise for making our community better for everyone, not just for special needs students.
Unified PE isn’t new to the Poway Unified School District. Poway and Del Norte High School incorporated this class into their curriculum last year. This year, all five high schools in PUSD are running this program, and according to a spokesperson from Poway Unified, the district is trying to be the first in the nation to add Unified Sports to all 39 of its schools, from elementary through high school.
In this program, students with special needs are paired with students without special needs who chose to enroll in the Unified PE class. Together, they practice playing a particular sport, then go to events at host schools where students across the district can compete in a fun, friendly competition. What’s special about this new addition is that it dedicates a full period each day to connecting with peers, rather than requiring voluntary time outside of school. Westview’s addition of this class, along with PUSD’s goals of spreading Unified Sports, marks a valuable and much-needed shift towards building long-lasting and structured programs in our district that promote true inclusive education for everyone.
In this program, students are meant to overcome the barriers of the presence, participation, and achievement in general education classes. Inclusive education aims to overcome educational practices that have historically segregated students based on disabilities. Because inclusive education is about quality education for all, it’s also important to invest in programs that bring potential benefits of inclusion for all students. This is what the Unified PE class allows us to do.
According to a study by Silvia Molina Roldán, a Professor at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili who works on inclusive education, students without special needs can benefit from participating in interactive learning environments with special needs students in at least three different ways. They found that peers build positive attitudes as they learn to respect others, accept differences, and acknowledge different abilities, creating opportunities for new friendships. Furthermore, they also enhance their social skills and patience by helping others participate and learn, and start gaining satisfaction from helping others learn. Finally, inclusive education creates opportunities to foster cognitive and academic development, stemming from the cognitive effort needed to explain themselves and from what their special education peers can teach them.
In addition to being a mutually beneficial program, sports as an approach to inclusive education is special because it allows for deeper bonds to form between students and peers. Students who enroll get the opportunity to connect with students they otherwise would not have interacted closely with. According to Westview Unified PE teacher Mrs. Elkins, many special needs students have a difficult time verbalizing needs and wants, which makes making friends hard, but everyone can connect over and enjoy sports.
Looking forward, the implementation of additional vocational learning classes, where gen-ed peers join special ed classes as models or tutors, would be a big step for our district. It would not only help both groups understand each other better, but also provide peers with important life and people skills that can benefit them far down the line.
