A Year in Sport, with Craig Brown
By William Moncrieff, Communications Manager
Craig Brown started his year by progressing through his post graduate degree in Physical Education (PE). “I would like to bring my own experiences and hopefully be a role model for children in high schools and show them that you can break down barriers no matter what.” Craig explained when talking about his motivations for wanting to become a PE teacher.
For Craig, sport and inclusion has always been really important. Especially when taking part in PE throughout both primary and secondary school. Despite his disability, Craig felt that teachers were supportive of him wanting to take part in sport and activity. However, in hindsight he explains, “I feel like now because I am a teacher, I look back now understanding how to include everyone in my class and I think that I made things easier for my PE teachers because I would adapt for them.”
“I often found myself saying, ‘it’s fine, I’ll do my own thing’, because I am confident and I was competent. Another one of my motivations for going into the post graduate would be, when I was younger I always loved sport. I played for my local and school football team but what I found was because of my disability I couldn’t do the same as everyone else. My coach wouldn’t put me on the pitch in case I got hurt or hurt anyone else. I never had a sense of belonging. I want to change these experiences.”
Craig is a former member of the Young Start programme – a programme designed to break down barriers for young individuals with a disability by helping them gain coaching qualifications. Craig a double amputee and started his higher education by doing a HNC/D in Coaching and Development, before transferring onto a Sports Coaching degree at University of Western Scotland where he achieved his Honors Degree before continuing on to his post graduate degree in PE teaching.
When Craig started his postgraduate, a lot of it was with other students who were also on the course. This is where Craig felt like he had an impact on his fellow students and lecturers.
“They (students and lecturers) would always say to me it’s good to have you in here, so we can engage and learn off of you before going into placement”, he said.
For Craig, having an inclusive mindset came more naturally throughout his postgraduate due to his own experiences. “Now, as a teacher, I need to accommodate various disabilities, whether it’s a physical disability, autism or a learning disability we need to accommodate that, I completely agree with that, it’s great.”
Once Craig and the other student teachers worked their way through the classroom element of the year, it was time to head out on placement. “The best part is definitely going out on placement, that’s where you learn a lot”, said Craig.
His placement experience has been a really enjoyable one for Craig, particularly the impact he can have on others. “People now know that you can remove these barriers, you can do whatever you want to do, I think I have helped the staff and the school to realise these kinds of things. You’ve made it all about having that open and honest conversation with someone.”
Craig felt that throughout the year he was able to build good relationships with fellow staff and pupils, which was due to his personality and humor. Craig felt like this benefited the pupils that he was teaching. “I have always just got on with things and adapted and the students definitely appreciated that, they were motivated to push themselves and try new things.”
Over this last year, there has been lots of other work done to ensure that pupils with a disability have the best possible experience in PE. An example of this has been the work done by Scottish Disability Sport (SDS) and the Scottish Qualification Authority (SQA) to modify course specification. For Craig, he felt like this was a positive step: “It’s really important, it needs to happen, it should have happened years ago. With SDS and SQA working together it helps pupils when they come to achieve their qualifications and to accommodate them.”
He continued to say: “When pupils are coming up, they can choose PE as they now have that confidence that they will be able to do PE as they can now be assessed in things like boccia.”
Fortunately for Craig this has always been part of his mindset and inclusive thinking, so he is keen to implement this into his future role as a PE Teacher “I’ve always wanted to bring wheelchair basketball or other forms of inclusive sports into schools.”
If you like to get involved as a coach, participant, official or volunteer, please contact your Regional Development Manager or contact SDS by email: admin@scottishdisabilitysport.com or call: 0131 317 1130.
Make sure to stay up-to-date on all opportunities throughout Scotland, by following Scottish Disability Sport on Facebook, X and Instagram, as well as on the SDS website.