Physical education for me has always been about learning how much of an exception I am. Students with severe physical disabilities shouldn’t be required to take PE classes. I started kindergarten with my first wheelchair, as my congenital muscular dystrophy had progressed. In my first few years of elementary school, PE wasn’t very enjoyable, but I did the activities as best as I could. As my mobility became even more limited, modifications became increasingly absurd. I realized nobody knew what to do with me.
Each year of elementary school, I would be assigned either a physical therapist or a special education teacher to help me “modify” the activities in general education PE. I still had to pass all of the required fitness tests, so the modifications were mostly ways to pass. My mother received a report card saying that I did 100 pushups, though I actually held a baseball bat (with my arms resting on my wheelchair) for twenty seconds. Instead of being active when we went outside to play games, I was strategizing how to stay cool or warm. Though there is a social aspect to PE, it isn’t as easy to make friends while watching them play kickball without you, rather than talking in the classroom. One year, I was just assigned a special ed teacher. Each day of class, she would say, “Wow John, I can’t believe they make you do this.”
In middle school, a lot of time was spent on ball-themed sports that couldn’t be easily modified. My teacher allowed me to go to the library during those times, where I was told to read books in which characters played the sport that was being played in class. It was more enjoyable than being hit by basketballs, but it was also time that could’ve been spent in an elective course. At least I demolished my other classmates during the FitnessGram pacer test.
My freshman year of high school, there were a large number of students, and it was practically impossible to incorporate me into anything, so the administrators allowed me to audit another class during the non-health semester. Rather than waste another class for my final year of PE, I took the online summer course. Even after receiving a note from a physician saying I should be fully exempt from the class, I was told to fill out activity logs each day, pasting a link to a workout YouTube video and answering the following questions as if I were the person in the video, rather than doing a workout. Was this helpful to me in any way? No. But I went through the course each day, doing “workouts,” making “fitness plans,” and learning about what a normal body should be able to do, because that’s what I needed to do in order to graduate from high school.
Though adaptive PE has been created to provide a solution for disabled students, it is helpful for some and not for others. Many intellectually disabled students thrive in it, as well as other students with limited mobility who can still be active in the right environment. But for those who move around with wheels better than legs, and joysticks better than arms, there is no way to adapt PE in a meaningful way. However, the health lessons are still important and should be taught to students in some capacity. Perhaps through a semester-long course, or through core classes and homerooms.
Regardless, it’s time to stop “modifying” workouts for students with limited mobility and start listening to what they, their parents, and their doctors say is necessary for their health. Other states have waiver opt-outs for PE, and it’s time that Virginia has the same. Virginia needs to change its laws surrounding physical education now.
John Gluck is a high school student in Fairfax County Virginia.
