Clear Creek Amana High junior wins $3k in grants to buy adapted PE equipment

TIFFIN — A Clear Creek Amana High School junior has received $3,000 in grant funding so the school can purchase physical education equipment for students with disabilities.

Reese Stockman, 17, saw a need for modified equipment for students with disabilities to have more options and feel more included in physical education class.

“We’re all capable of different things,” said Stockman, who enrolled her school’s Unified PE class this year. Unified PE was created to accommodate the needs and abilities of all learners where students from traditional and non-traditional classes, such as those with intellectual or physical disabilities, come together for fitness, sports, leadership and wellness activities.

“Working with these kids has made me a better and happier person,” Stockman said. “I feel that what they do for me translates to be about the same or even surpasses what I am seeking to do for them.”

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Stockman applied for grants and was awarded $400 from the Lindsay Family Foundation in Des Moines and the rest of the funds from anonymous grant donors.

Stockman said she wants the school to have the problem of “too much money” and not know what to do with it rather than not having enough. Stockman wants to be an adapted physical education teacher someday, designing instruction on an individual basis to meet the needs of children with disabilities.

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Cory Siders, a special-education teacher at Clear Creek Amana High, said he was “blown away” by Stockman’s initiative to apply for grant funding.

“When she initially brought this up to me, I was completely blown away by the fact that out of all the things she could raise money for or spend her time on, this was something near and dear to her heart,” Siders said.

Stockman was honored as student of the month in March, nominated by Siders, who said she is “always willing to step up.”

Siders said one example of the purchases they plan is modified equipment that allows the user to shoot a basketball, or use a bow and arrow, with a switch or button. This could help students with limited mobility in their arms and legs participate in these activities, he said. The goal is to have the equipment by this fall.

Students who have physical limitations make up 0.1 percent of the nation’s student population, Siders said. Purchasing equipment that may be used by only a couple of students a year is often unrealistic for school budgets, he said.

Additionally, equipment that includes the word “adapted” or “special needs” or other keywords like that increases the cost, Siders said.

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Through the Grant Wood Area Education Agency, which provides education services to seven counties in Eastern Iowa, including Linn, Johnson and Iowa, schools can test adapted PE equipment before they purchase it or temporarily have use of equipment that’s out of the school’s budget, said Rhyanne Hartwig, an adapted physical education consultant with Grant Wood AEA.

Hartwig said the mission of physical education has changed a lot in the last 10 years, focusing more on helping prepare students for continuing education, their career and life. “Can they build their own workout plan? Do they know how to be a well-rounded, healthy individual for their body?” she said.

For some students, the equipment they need to be included in activities has yet to be created. That’s why Hartwig also is an inventor, sometimes building modified equipment to help specific students be able to participate in activities.

One example is a rotating rock wall she created for students who use wheelchairs. The rock wall is upright, and when students grab the “rocks,” it moves like a treadmill. This helps students build mobility in their shoulders, Hartwig said.

Hartwig also worked with a student who uses a wheelchair and is on the cheerleading team at her school. Previously, her teammates would strap pompoms to her wheelchair, but Hartwig created gloves the student can wear with pompoms attached.

“This student got to hold a pompom for the first time in her whole life,” Hartwig said. “She was cruising around the gym in her electric chair with a smile on her face.”

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