Adaptive Jump Ropes - Physical Education
We have heard so many stories about students being excluded from their PE classes at school. Most of them sit on the sidelines, go to a nurse's room, or get the handle while other kids jump. This should not be happening in this day and age. There are way too many ways to think outside the classroom and figure out a way to make people with disabilities feel included in an activity, especially children.
Our Part In The Problem
The problem may be us. We've been in business for about 9 years. We've attended the SHAPE Conference, where at least a thousand PE teachers, administrators, and occupational therapists attend. We've been to APTA conferences where Physical Therapists swarm the floor in search of innovations. We've hosted dozens of adaptive competitions all around the world. Maybe we're not telling the story correctly.
A Social Media Post Awakens Us From Our Sleep
Last night, a series of notifications came in about a TikTok post from a PE Teacher who goes by the TikTok handle Mrs. Raymond. She made a post about four days ago showing how she solved the problem by using an old jump rope and tying pickle balls to the ends. This allowed her to offer a solution to a child in a wheelchair that did not include sitting at a distance watching.
So Many Views and Comments
To date, she has almost 100,000 likes and 1,338 comments. There's no video editing, no fancy backgrounds, heck, she appears to be sitting in a gym and having a conversational teaching moment. And we spend hours with curated videos and could add up all our content and never achieve what Mrs. Raymond has done. Cudos to you, good teacher.
Our Past and Our Future
Sometime around 2015-2016, we spent an evening in Miami scrounging for cheap jump ropes we could cut in half at a Dick's Sporting Goods, or some kind of store like that. We then bought a couple of dozen whiffle balls and tied the ends so athletes in wheelchairs could participate in a workout. It turned out to be a perfect adaptation, which led us to create Multi Ropes™ a few years later. Then we created a Youth Multi Rope™ made specifically for Pre-K and Grammer shcool aged children.
Let's Get The Word Out
So in the spirit of Mrs. Raymond, let's do a better job getting the word out about adaptations we can do for kids with a variety of impairments. We have a lot to learn, and we need to step up our game, letting people know what we do. Whether you buy something or make them yourselves, let's think harder for the kids, and maybe in the future every school will have figured this out!
