This autumn I had the great fortune to watch my granddaughter and her teammates participate in a Bocce ball season. My granddaughter had opted not to go out for soccer, a lifelong sport for her, to join this gathering of athletes. What a diverse bunch of kids and what a happy experience! It is called the Unified Bocce Team and is a part of Special Olympics, where typically abled players play on the same teams as peers of differently abled players. The Special Olympics website describes Unified Sports in this way: “Unified Sports joins people with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team. It was inspired by a simple principle: training together and playing together is a quick path to friendship and understanding.” That is exactly what I observed on a recent autumn afternoon as four schools competed in a Bocce tournament.
It was as much fun as any Friday night under the lights that I have ever attended. One of my granddaughter’s hearing-impaired friends bestowed upon her a special sign language name of her own. Kids took pictures together, high-fived, cheered each other on, and hung out like bunches of teenagers have for generations!
Several years ago, I tried very hard to eliminate the word disabled from my vocabulary, as my lifetime in schools has shown me that people are not so much disabled, as they are differently abled. I have met so many individuals who have faced challenges with grace and determination and with the same driving needs that every one of us has—a need to belong, to be a teenager among teenagers, a student among students, a worker among workers, an artist among artists. Years ago, I was a principal in a public elementary school where we had an integrated multiage classroom with kids of all types of abilities and all kinds of challenges. We were visited one day by some officials who wanted to observe that classroom. When I took them on a little tour, they saw kids working together, some writing, some computing, some reading, some building, all busy. One of the officials whispered to me, “Which ones are the disabled children?” I responded, “You tell me.” To which she responded, “I can’t tell.” And I said, “Exactly.”
Ever since I first came across Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences back in 1983, I have been waiting for its impact to translate into school experience. In his deeply researched theory, Gardner indicated that the human mind is much more elastic and engaging than we have, for over a century in this country, acknowledged. Since the advent of the standardized testing movement in the early twentieth century our schools have largely focused on logical and linguistic intelligences—math and reading. All our measures of IQ and of student success rely on a heavy dose of those specific intelligences. These undercut the other ways of knowing that Gardner identified and argued are equally valid, even as they are undervalued.
We need to broaden our conception of ability to be much more inclusive because we limit our potential when we exclude people based upon contrived metrics of ability.
By the way, I would be remiss if I ignored the adults who supported the Bocce Tournament and the professionals who worked in my integrated classrooms over the years. Teachers, Assistants, Students, Volunteers, Parents, and Community Members: I thank you for seeing what can be. Blessings to those who work with the children.
