Connecting to heroes via Classroom Champions

Throughout the Americas, technology is being used to connect kids to Paralympians and teach them valuable life lessons. 06 Apr 2014
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Classroom Champions

Since 2009, Classroom Champions has involved 41 Paralympic and Olympic athletes in making more than 245 video lessons.

ⒸClassroom Champions
By Classroom Champions

As these students become leaders in their own communities, they will take that viewpoint with them, to the benefit of everyone around them.

Relationships are powerful things in the lives of children.

Often, school children in low-income neighbourhoods lack adults in their lives who teach them to strive for big goals, support them while they persevere, and cheer for them when they accomplish their dreams.

Using distance technology, Classroom Champions has connected more than 3,500 students with currently competing Paralympian and Olympian mentors for year-long conversations about possibilities, self-efficacy, and engaging in school and in life.

These may be the very relationships that inspire these students to finish their educations, and that give them the skills to change their own destinies.

Since 2009, Classroom Champions has involved 41 Paralympic and Olympic athletes in making more than 245 video lessons, as well as blogging and live chatting with students on topics like goal setting, community, friendship, fair play, and healthy living. Schools are involved across the USA, Canada and Costa Rica. Some of these Paralympians include recent Sochi 2014 gold medallists Josh Sweeney and Taylor Lipsett from the USA’s ice sledge hockey team.

Compared to peers, three times more Classroom Champions students feel ready for their futures.

Paralympians have been part of Classroom Champions since the beginning. Students have a strong bond with their class athlete, and the Paralympians have welcomed open conversation around their impairments and living with amputations or using a wheelchair.

Students think of impairment within the frame of their relationship with their athlete, and as a result they see people with physical impairments through a lens of capability.

As these students become leaders in their own communities, they will take that viewpoint with them, to the benefit of everyone around them.

To mark the United Nations International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, the development arm of the IPC, the Agitos Foundation, is publishing stories where sport has helped to change lives or societies as part of the ChangeMakers campaign.

From 30 March until 13 April, stories will be posted on Paralympic.org and on the Agitos Foundation’s newly launched Facebook and Twitter pages.

Like or follow them to keep up to date with the latest news on the development of para-sport.