Miranda is 9 years old. She loves the color pink. She loves coloring. She loves art. She does not like exercising. Physical activity is a matter of uncertainty for the adapted physical education participant.
Miranda would shut down at the prospect of running backwards. She’d move to the corner of the MAC court in the New Balance Student Recreation Center. She did not want to go through an obstacle course. In her mind she couldn’t do it, and therefore, she wouldn’t try.
This was until her instructor, Holly Stewart, a third-year exercise science major, discovered the power of pictures.
“We had a breakthrough day when I got all the pictures together and had the visual aid.”
Stewart printed photos showing activities like “kicking” and “running.” She showed Miranda the visual plan ahead of time, and it worked. Miranda ran backwards.
“She needs to see things as opposed to me telling or demonstrating,” Stewart said.
To get Miranda, who has high-functioning autism, warmed up, Stewart runs with her student to different stations where they pretended to jump like a kangaroo or swim like a shark.
“It teaches you to adapt to situations,” Stewart said of her class. Developmental motor and aquatics laboratory teaches adaption in more ways than one.
Adapted Physical Education, more conversationally known as “swim and gym,” is a required class for all kinesiology and physical education students at the University of Maine. Each college class member is paired with a student who has a mental or intellectual disability ranging from autism to ADHD. Students range from age 3 to 30. Each partnership is different. Each is unique, just like the class.
In Adapted P.E., students manipulate the environments of the gym and pool to help their partner participate in physical activity just as any other student would.
“I think it was that the dynamic interaction between the person, the task and the environment. I’m not going to change your physiology,” said Steve Butterfield, the class instructor. “I’m not going to change you. But I’m going to change the environment and the task so you can participate better. That core principle has stood the test of time.”
This Maine Day will conclude the 30th year of swim and gym, a class Butterfield began when he arrived at UMaine.
“When I went to college, I wanted to be the world’s greatest basketball coach, but that wasn’t in the cards,” he said. Butterfield got a job at a school for the deaf as a gym teacher and basketball coach.
When the deinstitutionalization of special education laws was passed, suddenly Butterfield’s classes were filled with people who had multiple disabilities. Realizing his own unpreparedness, he decided to “retool.” After attending graduate school at Ohio State, he returned to his deep roots in New England, got a job at UMaine and swim and gym was born.
Adapted P.E. is an opportunity for students in kinesiology and physical education to glean skills that will help them in whatever field they work in — “real world” skills, as many people involved in the class refer to them.
“I truly believe that all good physical education is adapted. Whether you’re working with someone with a severe disability or a gifted athlete,” Butterfield said. “Principles of adapted physical education are kind of universal. And if you master that, you can see that and apply that. Whether you’re a coach, athletic trainer, teacher.”
Each pairing is unique — Butterfield labors over the right groupings. He believes each student has an “Aha” moment at a different time. For Stewart and her student, that breakthrough came with visual aids.
“When I see [Miranda having] fun and enjoying things she said she wasn’t going to like — seeing her do things she thinks she can’t — [it] is really rewarding,” Stewart said.
The moment is typical and a common occurrence among Butterfield’s students, whom he said go through five stages throughout the class: first, fear, apprehension and uncertainty; next, anger at their instructor. Then comes the third stage where they “figure it out and become competent.” Fourth is confidence. “They get their kid and clipboard [and] go to work”, and finally the fifth step is ownership, “where [college students] start referring to them as ‘my kid.’”
“What comes out of it? The change, because my students change more than the kids they serve,” Butterfield said. “They change a lot”
However, for participants in swim and gym, it means more than gym class.
Bryce Kennedy, 29, has participated in swim and gym since he was in high school and describes the class in one word: helpful.
“And I’ll tell you why,” he said. “If it wasn’t for everyone here, I don’t know where I’d be. The college students devote their time and effort to be with people who have special needs.”
For Lynn Farber, a Greenhouse Nursery School aide who comes with the participants, the class is all about altering perspectives.
Farber said people approach her and comment on how much taller Bryce is standing, both physically — he’s been working on lifting upper and lower body with his college student partner — and emotionally.
“They say, ‘I can’t believe how much straighter he’s walking.’ It’s about teaching the individual what’s important in their life,” Farber said.
It’s connections like this that string together the class’ existence and impact not only the college students’ lives but the community as well.
“I don’t think any of the students ever forget or lose sight of [the experience], which is a huge gift Steve’s been giving, and he’s been giving this gift for 30-plus years,” Farber said.