Collaboration Between Special and Physical Education The Benefits of a Healthy Lifestyle for All Students

Mr. Smith is a high school physical education (PE) teacher who has an average of 40 students in each class period. His classes are diverse, each including at least one student with a disability. His students are diagnosed with a variety of disabilities, which results in a wide range of cognitive and physical challenges in a PE classroom. One of the students has a one-on-one paraprofessional who assists him throughout the school environment. Others attend with their classroom peers but seem to need more support than students without disabilities. Ms. Garcia is an elementary PE teacher who sees her students only one to two days a week for 30 minutes. Her classes are smaller, but she must compete with the lunch and assembly schedules on top of her already limited schedule for PE class. She has a variety of students with multiple abilities who may need physical accommodations as well as emotional ones. Often, Mr. Smith and Ms. Garcia are unsure how to support their students and provide them with meaningful experiences. They realize some students with disabilities do not fully participate in their classes, but they are not sure how to make appropriate changes. Moreover, during recent professional development, Mr. Smith and Ms. Garcia have learned about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). They recognize that in order to align their instruction to CCSS and to meet the needs of all of their students, they will have to collaborate with other professionals at their school. © 2015 The Author(s).