Miss-Delectable
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Y gymnasts get lessons within lessons | newsleader.com | The News Leader
Tina-Margaret Steele is teaching a lot more than gymnastics to young wanna-be Olympians at the Staunton-Augusta YMCA. She also is teaching them that what some of us call disabilities are simply tools to strengthen abilities.
Steele is deaf. Her students need a translator to understand some of her instructions. But with emphasized gestures and expressions, she puts pre-schoolers on a balance beam and helps build their skills and confidence.
Steele — and her work at the Y — highlight a connection this community has strengthened over more than a hundred years. With the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind on East Beverley Street since the 1840s, businesses have long benefited from having its graduates working and offering their skills and talent.
Through a translator, Steele told reporter Rebecca Martinez that as a gymnastics student she learned more quickly because she needed to pay closer attention to the instructor. And in teaching at the Y, as well as in her art classes at VSDB, she is a strong role model for accentuating what the students can do, rather than lowering the bar because of what they can't do.
It's a win-win proposition, not only for the Y and Steele, but for the children who experience a positive relationship with someone who might on the surface appear different to them.
In any classroom, lessons abound. Steele's students are learning much more than how to turn cartwheels or launch a perfect vault. By watching their instructor accentuate her abilities and live her life to the fullest, they are learning how to overcome adversity. That will likely be a much more useful lesson as they move through life than anything they learn about gymnastics.
Tina-Margaret Steele is teaching a lot more than gymnastics to young wanna-be Olympians at the Staunton-Augusta YMCA. She also is teaching them that what some of us call disabilities are simply tools to strengthen abilities.
Steele is deaf. Her students need a translator to understand some of her instructions. But with emphasized gestures and expressions, she puts pre-schoolers on a balance beam and helps build their skills and confidence.
Steele — and her work at the Y — highlight a connection this community has strengthened over more than a hundred years. With the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind on East Beverley Street since the 1840s, businesses have long benefited from having its graduates working and offering their skills and talent.
Through a translator, Steele told reporter Rebecca Martinez that as a gymnastics student she learned more quickly because she needed to pay closer attention to the instructor. And in teaching at the Y, as well as in her art classes at VSDB, she is a strong role model for accentuating what the students can do, rather than lowering the bar because of what they can't do.
It's a win-win proposition, not only for the Y and Steele, but for the children who experience a positive relationship with someone who might on the surface appear different to them.
In any classroom, lessons abound. Steele's students are learning much more than how to turn cartwheels or launch a perfect vault. By watching their instructor accentuate her abilities and live her life to the fullest, they are learning how to overcome adversity. That will likely be a much more useful lesson as they move through life than anything they learn about gymnastics.