At the Sartell High School, there is a class called unified PE that upperclassmen can join. There also is a unified club where anyone can join. We do fun activities outside of school and in school with kids with disabilities. You can sign up anytime and come hang out with us in Sabre time and join the schoology code to join the club!
Unified club and PE is a place where you can be yourself, and we focus on inclusion. This program is bringing people together and working with kids with disabilities. In my experience, this program has taught me so much and changed my way of life. It brings me so much joy seeing the kids light up when they see people coming to hang out with them. We want them to feel included when sometimes they don’t, and our goal is to have them move past their disabilities and have fun. This class has inspired me to be a special education teacher in the future. This experience the school has given me has taught me to be more patient and not care what others think.
Emily Stoebe, one of the special education teachers, and Jacob Sailer, the unified PE teacher, answered questions about the program and shared a little bit about their experiences.
What is unified?
Emily Stoebe: “Unified is bridging the gap between students with disabilities and mainstream students so we get together outside of the school day to do activities, maybe go to a movie or go to a sporting event and the general ed peers act as mentors to the students with disabilities.”
Jacob Sailer: “Unified is a physical education class that allows mainstream students to partner up with special education students to create an inclusive environment for the phy ed setting.”
What is your favorite thing about Unified?
Emily Stoebe: “Seeing students make connections in the club and interact during the school day.”
Jacob Sailer: “My favorite part is just talking with everybody in the class and just having fun throughout the entire block, it’s a little different than your stereotypical phy ed class”.
When did you start unified?
Emily Stoebe: “We did our first unified event spring of 2020 we went to Mr. Twisty’s”.
Jacob Sailer: “Oh we were just talking about that, I think it’s been since 2020, right around there we’ve been having that class, last year was our first year having it every quarter, otherwise it was a couple quarters a year.”
Why did you start unified?
Emily Stoebe: “We wanted to give students with disabilities the opportunity to be in the community without their parents or a PCA and time with their mainstream peers.”
Jacob Sailer: “ Well, I heard about unified through Special Olympics because they played a big role in like starting these classes out in the state and kinda around the country, then you know I met with the principal of the time to talk about how we could serve these kids that need adaptive phy ed. We thought what a great opportunity to create a class for them to collaborate with their peers to create, you know we keep saying like this environment, so everyone can participate.”
