21 December 2012
(This is a real life story to go with @sammielee46's Opuss project)
In another life of long time ago I was a Physical Education student. As an undergraduate I did an internship in an elementary school. My mentor, the old phys ed teacher from the school, was in his sixties, packing an impressive pouch, badly farsighted and suffering from chronic arthritis. His classes mostly consisted of a football tossed to the boys and a volleyball to the girls. He would then sit in the corner and read newspapers. His gaze would travel above his thin-rimmed glasses to his students only when the amount of screaming or crying went much beyond the usual deafening noise.
It was a huge surprise for the students when I implemented a structured class, with warm up and some real elements of physical education, like gymnastics, athletics, and so on. The class I will remember for the rest of my days happened during the first week of my internship. A group of 4-graders (that's 10 years of age in the country I'm from) walked into the gym and lined up in front of me, confused, but excited. The old teacher suggested that I should just toss them balls, because they were "too young to understand real sports," but I politely ignored it.
The excitement reached crescendo after the warm up, when I had them assemble the mats for gymnastics. Imagine, a class without balls! We were going to do some basic tumbling, starting with a forward somersault on the mat. At the end of the line of students, standing a few steps away from everyone was a chubby girl, looking at me with serious and frightened eyes. As the line moved and the students tumbled over the mat one by one, she backed away. I watched her looking at her classmates. Her face was contorted with the conflict of desire to try and terror of failure. Obviously, the terror part was winning, and she inched farther back. I beckoned her to come over. The classmates giggled, and the old teacher pulled me aside to whisper into my ear.
"Leave that girl alone, she is developmentally challenged," he said.
No way I was going to do that.
I smiled at her and quieted the rest of the class, calling her to the mat. She shook her head. Someone laughed. After some hesitations and a lot of encouragement, the girl approached the mat. There was a single tear running down her cheek. She was terrified of being mocked. With few stern looks and a shout I managed to get a complete silence from the rest of the gang. Then, slowly, I helped her roll over the mat. It was a clumsy tumble, but not worse than the rest of her peers. When she stood up I praised her, told her she's bound to be a gymnast and I was rewarded with the warmest smile I've seen. Somehow, defying gravity, the tear was still there.
That smile melted the hearts of her classmates. For the rest of the hour they left her place in the lineup, encouraged and clapped at her attempts, and for once she was one of them.
That day her classmates learned that helping a friend with special needs could be more rewarding than mocking her. I only hope they carried that lesson into adulthood.
Somersault (a special needs story) • Opuss № I