Triad adapted PE specialist brings joy to student exercise
HIGH POINT, N.C. (WGHP) — Jason Novak loves every moment he gets to spend with his students. Whether it is at the Special Olympics games or in school, he is always encouraging them. Novak is a Guilford County Schools adapted physical education specialist. He thrives when his students thrive. One of his students, Tomas, was chosen as a Torch Bearer for the Spring Special Olympics games, and Novak could not have been more proud.
About Tomas, he says, 'We have definitely built a connection. I really like seeing him be able to achieve things that you know a lot of people might look at him and say, oh, he can't do that, but it's my job to make sure that we adapt it in some way that he is still successful and it might, like I said earlier, it might look a little different, but he's still able to achieve the ultimate goal.'
Throughout the school year, Mr. Novak's students look forward to his classes. They get excited when they see him because they know they are going to have some fun.
'You know, a lot of my kids struggle with sitting at a desk and you know, having that quiet time focused time that usually happens in a classroom,' Novak says. 'So we get to come in here and its organized chaos, to say the least, but they get to be up, and they get to be active. And so, you know, it's a different setting than what the majority of school is. So they, you know, get to have that fun in here, but we're also learning life skills for them to kind of take out into the community hopefully as they grow older.'
He gets his ideas on how to adapt their exercises from many different sources, including a once-favorite television show.
'I grew up watching MacGyver, which is weird, but I kind of say like, you know, just kind of give me a couple pieces of equipment and I'll make it work. Some of the schools I go to are very blessed with the amount of equipment that they have, other schools, not so much. So we just kind of have to make do with what we have a lot of trial by error trial fire mostly cause they'll get upset if they're if they're not successful,' he says.
When that happens, he will go back to work and try to figure out something new for his students to try. It's not always easy and definitely not predictable. But he says he loves it.
'I do. I my mom was a teacher for Guilford County schools for 25-30 years, and I knew a long time ago I wanted to be a teacher. I was not built for the classroom. I built to be active and move. And so, I became a PE teacher 18 years ago and did 12 years of Gen. Ed High School and then took a leap into adaptive PE. And that was about six years ago, and I will never turn back.'
Novak teaches at 12 different schools across the county, so he spends a lot of his day traveling. But he says it's definitely worth it.
'Heck yeah, it is worth it all day, every day. You know, kind of getting that aha moment of when you see them finally me being able to like adapt something and then being able to see like an older siblings hit a baseball and they struggle hitting that moving ball, but yet we break it down on like a tee or we have it swing on a pendulum. So, the ball comes to the exact same spot every time and they make that contact, you know, and they get that feeling of like I've seen other people do this. And I know I can do it as well. So that's probably the best part!'
He says, 'Every day is different. Every school is different. Every kid is different.'
But one thing never changes. That's this PE Specialist's dedication to his students.
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