Making inclusion a priority at Thorndon Park Primary School
Principal Greg Johnson and teacher Karsan Hutchinson were eager to explore how Sport4All could help educate both students and staff about disability in meaningful, practical ways.
Staff and students recently shared a game of blind cricket, to give everyone a first-hand experience of inclusive sport. Students and teachers wore vision simulation glasses to replicate different types of vision impairment. This gave them a powerful insight into how varied sight loss can be. Karsan reminded the students to keep the glasses on, even when the game got tricky, because for someone with a disability, taking them off isn’t an option.
One student, Hunter (Year 6), reflected:
“It was really fun. I thought blind people would just see black, but I learned about being vision-impaired. Playing cricket with the blind glasses was hard, and it made me realise that some people have to manage with this every day. I like that people with vision impairment can be given the same opportunities.”
That’s knowledge Hunter, and all the students will carry with them. When they meet a person with a disability in the future, they won’t feel awkward or unsure; they’ll simply treat them like anyone else.
Experiences like this help normalise inclusion. For these students, disability isn’t just something they’ve read about, it’s something they’ve experienced, played alongside, learned from, and celebrated.