canceled forever

Let me tell you about the greatest thing. It’s the annual basketball games special ed classes play against each other. I’m saying this without the tiniest whiff of irony. Each class plays two games in the spring semester, one at home and one away. They are the best days of the school year. This is a scientifically verifiable fact.

When I first started, the staff that had been working in the classroom for a few years talked it up, and I was doubtful. How could a basketball game be that great? I’m not much for sports, and the event takes up most of a day, even more so for the away game. It sounded stressful and exhausting.

The game is organized a bit differently than the average high school basketball game. There are large plastic rings hung from the normal hoop, to accommodate students that might not have the strength to heave a ball to a normal hoop. There’s a second one hung lower for students in wheelchairs, who can roll up to the hoop and push it in, which adds an interesting dynamic: any student in a wheelchair that gets the ball can take it straight up to the hoop and push it in without any interference. The players are switched out often to give everyone a chance to play.

When I first got to the auditorium, it was mostly empty, except for the team my students were playing. They were warming up too, in uniform; a strange classroom full of students and mainstream peers from the Twilight Zone, like us and ours, but also… not. Their class seems a lot more difficult to handle, and I was thankful that my class that year was so tame compared to others. But the bell rang, and students poured in. The auditorium was completely full. There was a band, announcers, the pom squad, and an auditorium of screaming students. It was utterly overwhelming, and whatever anxiety or disinterest the students had over the game was blown away. Allen in particular, who spent the weeks leading up to the game telling the staff that he didn’t want to do it and that it was canceled, would scream and shout whenever he did well. Every time he got back to the bench, he would scream his teachers’ names and high five everyone in sight. I shamelessly yelled and cheered myself hoarse, commenting feverishly on a game I barely understand even when there aren’t wheelchairs and autism involved. There wasn’t a bored look or a cynical sneer in sight. In that moment I understood why people enjoy sports in general. I had spent the majority of my nerdy hermit life heaping contempt on sports and the people that watched them. They must be troglodytes, these bellowing morons who get so wide-eyed over buff dudes that throw balls and add numbers! They’re overpaid degenerates! Why can’t we pay teachers that much! Blah blah blah. But I was pulled into an entirely new community. I understood the emotional connection people could have to and through the players, the game, and other fans, because I’m already emotionally invested in my students, the players. I could understand how people could maintain a dual consciousness of the fact that the game doesn’t ultimately matter (an oft-cited reason to hate it among elitist turds) but that in that moment, it’s important. Granted, this is a strange and roundabout (and still pretty damn nerdy) way to get to an appreciation of sports, but I can definitely connect my recent interest in soccer and football to these games.

There are things about the games that frustrated me, especially this year, but that’s not what I remember the most. I remember the announcer coming up with nicknames for our students, the sweaty glee with which they threw themselves into the game, an excitement I rarely got to see when it came to math problems or reading. Maybe this sounds like a sugary dose of not only inspirational special ed bullshit, but inspirational sports bullshit too. But believe me, it somehow broke through my cynical unhappiness to fill me with an unexpected and uncharacteristic pleasure. I found myself grinning like a moron for most of it.

(The only thing that clouds the event for me is an attitude some teachers have toward the game. Some people seem to believe that the best way to foster a fun time is to make sure everyone comes away feeling like a winner by ending the game in a tie. Because as everyone knows, everyone wins in a tie game, instead of no one. Apparently the impetus to treat our students like everyone else stops when it comes to playing games. Why would we need to foster healthy competition and teach the value of losing gracefully when its far easier to gloss over the issue and treat them like children? The students that understood what was going on in the game loved to win and could grasp what it means to be nice when you lose, and the students that didn’t connect the game to the score wouldn’t have cared one way or the other, so why pass up a potentially fun memory and a good teaching moment? It baffles me.)

And afterward is pizza! Usually followed by a bunch of movies! Then we get to go home! Who wouldn’t want to do that? And to get paid for it, well golly! I may have enjoyed it more than any of my coworkers this year, and probably more than some of the students.