In his first year as a special-education teacher at Annandale High School, Jae Lee capitalized on the opportunity to bring a Special Olympics program to the Fairfax County campus.
It started out with 10 athletes and just a handful of general education peer helpers. It offered a unified basketball team, pairing students with disabilities with other students.
But since that inaugural year in 2017, the program has expanded, and now includes soccer and track and field teams, too. There are 20 athletes across the three sports, and 25 helpers that are involved.
“It was a chance for our students, especially in our special education program, to have access to sports and activities that, traditionally, they wouldn’t have access to because they normally would not try out for a varsity or a JV team,” Lee said.
Now, years after the program started, Annandale is one of nine schools in Virginia to be recognized as a Special Olympics National Unified Champion School. The award honors schools that meet 10 “standards of excellence” and help create an inclusive environment.
“Inclusivity is just a really big thing that, here at Annandale, we stand for and support,” student Sage Nagle said.
It may look different depending on the time of day, but Nagle said the group meets up with athletes in a classroom, and then will walk with them to a court, field or track that’s usually on the school’s campus. The general education students stretch, pass and dribble with them, and they’re “either next to them or on the sideline, cheering them on, giving them that support that they need to really succeed,” she said.
The buy-in, Lee said, is evident in the hallways, where the students connect and support each other, even if it’s brief.
When teacher Katie Shaw started at the school last year, she was struck by the way everyone in the building was aware of what the program does.
“Everyone in this building supports that and stands by it with us,” Shaw said. “So it’s a whole-school approach, and it’s a team effort in inclusion and just promoting what we stand by.”
The program has been especially helpful for students such as Sonny Hernandez, who started playing basketball as part of a Special Olympics program in middle school. Initially, he had sensory overload upon walking into a crowded gym, because of all the lights and commotion. But now, his mom Autumn said, he’s confident and grabs the ball without hesitation.
“I never see him as comfortable as he is when he’s on the field with his teammates,” Autumn said. “He just looks so relaxed and happy to be there.”
While the program gives Sonny the chance to enjoy sports, Autumn said it’s also helpful for the general education students, because “the more interaction they get to have with people with disabilities, the more comfortable they become, so that it just becomes a normal interaction and not something to be uncomfortable with.”
The standards used to evaluate schools for the award include activities such as unified sports and making sure a whole school campus plays a role in promoting an inclusive environment. Lee said he applied for the honor almost every year that the school’s been a part of the program, but there were certain parts of standards they hadn’t reached.
“Looking at the standards made me realize, ‘Oh, we’re not doing this as well. Maybe this is how we get to become a more inclusive school,'” Lee said.
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