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Feb 2, 2006 1:01 PM
Blind teacher, subject of ’99 New York Teacher article, wows TV’s Danza — and lives an Olympic dream
From the cover: Actor and talk show host Tony Danza got the cameras rolling and brought America into Steve Sloan’s gym in Harlem. After filming, he shows off his new PS 102 T-shirt.
Readers of the New York Teacher weren’t the only ones wowed by blind physical education teacher and coach Steve Sloan, who starred in the Oct. 6, 1999, feature headlined: “A True Visionary.”
Sloan’s light has spread so far and wide that he was recently honored with a trip to Italy to carry the Olympic torch for the 2006 winter games after talk show host Tony Danza got wind of the Harlem hero.
“I’m still pinching myself,” Sloan told the New York Teacher during a Dec. 9 visit, three days before the brawny, brainy, 50-year-old athlete was flown to Italy where the games open on Feb. 26 in Turin.
“For me, this opportunity is all about promoting physical ed and good health and fitness for children of all ages,” he said, after shooting a few baskets in his squeaky clean gym at PS 102, where he runs a tight ship. Sloan has been teaching and coaching special ed and general ed kids together in the same classes for more than 20 years, long before “inclusion” was a buzzword.
“Let the city, the country, the world know that phys ed, once so denigrated, is back from the dead. I want to shine a light on it.”
The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to carry the torch wasn’t the only surprise that Danza had in store for Sloan. Danza outfitted the gym with brand-new basketballs, tennis rackets, volleyballs, baseball mitts, exercise hoops and steps, a climbing wall and a huge mural painted by artist Michael Israel. And every one of the nearly 400 students at the East Harlem school got a brand-new pair of Adidas sneakers.
How did he discover the surprise equipment? Was it the brand-new smells permeating the gym? Sloan, after all, knows when an administrator is standing at his gym door by the scent of her perfume.
The flame lit, Harlem’s Steve Sloan gets ready to run with the Olympic torch in Turin,Italy.
“No,” he said, “I bumped into everything.”
This dream-beyond-wildest dreams was set in motion when 4th-grade teacher Carissa Finn wrote a glowing letter about Sloan to Danza in September. Danza was hooked. He contacted the school, became Principal for a Day, took a gym class with Sloan and was even more impressed.
And who wouldn’t be impressed? Sloan, blind from birth, spent the first 18 years of his life getting shunted in and out of foster homes and group homes, did not learn Braille until he was 12, and rejected the idea of going into “music, piece-making, small jobs — all the areas they expect non-sighted people to go into. I wanted to climb mountains.”
He also wanted to become a public school teacher. After getting a bachelor’s degree from Lehman College and a master’s from NYU, then working for a stint as a recreational therapist, he decided he wanted to bring structure and discipline into the city schools.
Sloan learned to play basketball when he was about 8 by listening and watching vague shadows.
“You had to have your own ball to play, so I got one, but nobody said you had to see to play,” he said.
Now he cuts the gym off in angles and corners in his mind, “so wherever you go, I’m gonna go.” He knows every student by his or her voice, touch and the sound of how each individual dribbles the ball. During a volleyball game, according to teacher Lisa Ortiz, he knows whether a child hits the ball with a hand, a fist, and if it went over the net.
Lorenzo Cowell (left), Sloan’s gym assistant and “eyes,” is thrilled to be in Florence, “in the land of Michelangelo.”
Sloan sank one basket after the next as NBC was filming a special on him and his students, then he took a break in his homey office, which seems to be the cool place to hang out at PS 102. He wasn’t as interested in talking about airing times for the several features on him as he was in talking about the kids in the orange T-shirts.
“All those wearing orange shirts mean that they have run 20 miles in the Mileage Club,” he said. “They get a prize every five miles. When phys ed took a back seat, that’s when we started seeing diabetes, asthma and obesity, just for starters, in this city.”
Sloan, who can bench press 250 pounds, jogs for three miles every morning, swims 75 laps at night, ice-skates and bowls, teaches kids to “treat their body like a million-dollar machine.”
November and December was a whirlwind of reporters and TV crews coming and going, but Sloan was glad to learn that the New York Teacher had arrived.
After their chapter meeting, teachers at PS 102 give a little bon voyage party to Sloan (center) and his assisant, Lorenzo Cowell (far left), before the two leave for Italy. Chapter Leader Pernell Jones is fifth from right.
“That’s because I know you’ll do what none of the big TV stations will do, and that’s to mention my colleagues in this school who helped me make this work.”
Sloan reeled off the names of teachers Allison “Lightfoot” Booker, Lisa Ortiz, Ernest “Iceman” Ivory, Carolyn Cruz “and all the others who worked with the kids during the TV sessions.
“I want to thank the principal, Sandra Gittens, for giving me the opportunity to tell my story and allowing me to be involved with students in wonderful projects and in the Olympics,” he said.
He saves his biggest thanks for Lorenzo Cowell, his assistant for seven years, for accompanying him on his route as an Olympic torch-bearer.
“Lorenzo is my eyes, and he has good eyes,” Sloan said. Cowell says that Sloan has been like a father to him and got on his case to go back to school to further his education.
And how did Cowell feel about his trip to Italy?
“A dream come true. Of course about being part of the Olympics,” said the tall, athletic young guy in a spotless, professional-looking warmup suit. “But really because it’s the land of Michelangelo.”
