Just like an Olympian

As Judith Beltran lifted a cardboard roll with two balloons attached at each end over her head, she could not suppress the wide smile that suddenly appeared on her face. For that pretend moment in time, Beltran was an Olympic athlete going for gold in the weight lifting competition.

With a little help from Kern County Superintendent of Schools Special Education aide Jan Estep and teacher Bill Trout, McKinley School student Monica Garcia pretends she is lifting weights at the Olympics.Minutes before, David Palomino had willingly accepted a papier-mache torch, complete with a crepe paper flame, from classmate Juan Saldaña, and ran with it as though he was on his way to the opening ceremonies in Athens.

All three students were taking part in classroom curriculum designed by Kern County Superintendent of Schools Special Education teacher Bill Trout. The seven students in the year-round class have multiple handicaps that did not seem to dampen their enthusiasm for the challenging tasks Trout had prepared for them.

"Since everything taught in class is designed to help our students with socialization, communication and motor skills, I came up with the idea that the approaching Summer Olympics would be a great subject around which to build a curriculum," Trout said.

Actually the concept was a continuation of what the class had been doing all summer - studying the community. According to Trout, they had learned how to recognize buildings, rode a city bus to see what activities make up life in a city, visited a library to generate interest in books and reading and learned about some of the prominent businesses and community leaders in Bakersfield.

"Then, I discovered an athlete from Fresno was going to be competing in the weight lifting venue at Athens, and the idea of creating learning activities based on the Olympics seemed like a fun way to create more awareness about the world around them," Trout said. "We started talking about the Olympics, and you cannot very well do that without having the props to show what kinds of events take place. So, aides Elsa De La Cruz, Jan Estep, Anthony Rodriguez and myself used our combined imaginations to manufacture some fun-looking barbells, a torch and discus to illustrate what the students could expect on television."

Trout excused himself for a moment to show student Monica Garcia how to hold a cardboard replica of a discus and to demonstrate to the rest of the class how to throw one. They laughed as Trout and aide Rodriguez went through the exaggerated gyrations a discus thrower exhibits while preparing to toss it a long distance. Then, one-by-one each student took their turns letting the cardboard disc fly with excited and amused reactions in evidence on student faces as they watched the event unfold.

"They are now prepared and very much interested in what will happen once the Olympics start on Aug. 13," Trout said. "Of course one of the events they are really looking forward to is the opening ceremony, with all the athletes and visual displays. It will be kind of neat if the Fresno athlete medals, and we will try to videotape some of the events, such as the weight lifting, at home to show in class. We will make a chart to keep track of the medal count, too."

While the world Olympians make their way to Athens, Trout's students will anxiously await what new aspect of the games he will introduce to them each day leading up to the opening ceremonies. The knowledge they retain will help prepare them for elements of life that exist outside the classroom.
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