2022-2023 Special Olympics Vision
By: Jessica Nunan, MPS Special Education Teacher and Special Olympics Coach for MPS
Special Olympics is a world-wide organization that was initially designed to create an opportunity for individuals with intellectual disabilities to participate in sports. Now, Special Olympics has expanded its outreach into helping athletes with health care, post-secondary training opportunities and helping foster more inclusive environments across the community.
With the idea of inclusion in mind, this year the MPS Special Education team is working to expand the Special Olympics activities and events at Mexico Public Schools. The first steps to expanding the program include:
- Making the existing sports teams Unified Teams. This would mean that each team has an equal number of athletes with and without intellectual disabilities participating.
- Increasing our families’ awareness of the tools and services that Special Olympics Missouri headquarters in Jefferson City provides by taking current and potential athletes to the SOMO headquarters to participate in active fitness and social games.
- Inclusion Revolution Day - Friday, March 31st, 2023
- Taken from the SOMO website: Inclusion Revolution Days have a goal not only to be a fun event for our Special Olympics athletes, but also to promote inclusiveness. The day typically starts with a pep rally. After the pep rally, Special Olympics athletes and their buddies rotate stations playing games, dancing, eating popcorn and snow-cones, face painting and fun. Participants can take the pledge to Choose to Include by signing a banner.
(https://somo.org/ucs/)
- The goals for the day have 4 parts:
- To increase awareness and participation of the Special Olympics team to recruit more athletes and Unified Partners.
- To help existing clubs and organizations within MPS become more aware of individuals with disabilities and think about ways their organization can be more inclusive with these individuals, not only on the day of the event, but throughout the school year.
- Area schools will be invited to attend Inclusion Revolution Day in hopes of helping them become more aware of the opportunities and benefits of starting a Special Olympics team in their district.
- At the event, all athletes will be paired with a Unified Partner and/or buddy for the day. This will help foster relationships between athletes and their peers.
Over the past 10 years the Mexico School Special Olympics team has continued to grow and create opportunities for their athletes. The positive impact the team has for the athletes can be seen everywhere, from the basketball court, to the classroom, within our school’s clubs and organizations and among the families that we support. We look forward to continuing to expand our program, not only for our athletes, but for our community.