Greetings Arizona Health and Physical Educators and Welcome to 2024!
I trust everyone was able to enjoy the holidays with family and friends, make a little dent in that home ‘to do’ list, relax and get recharged for the spring semester.
As we prepare for the second half of the year, I wanted to address the topic of paraeducators (or paraprofessionals, teaching assistants, etc.) in physical education. I realize that most of our support personnel are not trained in working with our students with disabilities in the physical education setting. However, they are an integral part of providing a successful, inclusive physical education experience for all students, but especially those with disabilities. Unfortunately, they are not sure of what is expected of them and how to go about working with our students in an activity based setting. As physical educators it is our responsibility to provide some information to our support personnel, including what the activities will be ahead of time and ways to ensure those students feel included in the class. Below I have included some tips you can use for yourself as well as forward onto special education classroom teachers and the support staff that will be coming to PE with students with disabilities.
Below you will find information on accessing a letter you can share with your support personnel as well as a document that was created several years ago by the Mesa Public Schools Adapted Physical Education department. The purpose of this document was to provide our adapted physical education teachers and paraprofessionals with ideas for possible modifications and or accommodations for physical education activities used in our schools.
Please feel free to print this document and hand it out to anyone you feel would benefit from it.
This document does not include every activity imaginable but we feel it does a pretty good job of providing strategies to meet the needs of all our students. If you have any questions please reach out to your adapted PE teacher as they can be your best resource.
Thank you,
Dr. Jennifer Houston
Adapted Physical Education, Mesa Public Schools
Arizona Health and Physical Education President-Elect
Link to ‘Letter to Support Personnel’: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C-EqcTdlJ4nLMtiV0-Ja6UXU_6E3rlEbk0Zcx5bnbyc/edit?usp=sharing
Link to ‘Activity Modification Suggestions’: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i0LII–GMyyAWOyl-vPfn5nS0yS055L0ucbkksuvgnU/edit?usp=sharing
