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- Dr. Louis Bowers
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Louis Bowers
AH: Were you working in that program in anticipation of getting football? Was it before football?
LB: It was really before football. Do you mean the athletic training?
AH: Yes.
LB: Football didn’t really enter into the equation so much. Although, it has helped give more variety of experience, but it was more the need in high schools for athletic trainers. So many high schools are using high school student trainers. While they may be good people, they’re very young to be in that very responsible position to be looking at injuries and making decisions and so forth. At games they have physicians and attendants, but at practices is where a lot of players get hurt. They have five days of practice and one day of the week is the game. If you don’t have the qualified personnel there for practices, it’s not a good situation.
In terms of the all of our programs, when I first came here it was a K-12 certification in physical education which meant that we prepared students for teaching both elementary and high school. In the program there were individuals who knew the day they came in that they never wanted to teach a small elementary child. They wanted to be a high school teacher and perhaps even a coach. As they went through that part of the program dealing with young children they were getting by until they could get to the real stuff that they were interested in. Dr. Hugh Hoffman was the person who led this action. He convinced the Florida Board of Education that we should have certification for elementary, K-8, and secondary, 6-12, with the middle school being the overlap. He got K-8 and 6-12 teacher certifications approved as a state requirement. We changed our program to two tracks where students coming in would study young children in depth for the elementary grades and those who were interested in high school would study only the older age group. That makes such a difference in the morale of the students. They weren’t stuck learning something that they thought they would never use. The reality is, when they graduated under the K-12 programs they many times took a job where they could find it, and that was in the elementary school. They’d come back and say, I wish I had paid more attention to that elementary teaching.
When we had K-8 and 6-12 certifications you couldn’t have a person who was six through twelve teaching young children. Unfortunately, within the last two years, the Florida State Legislature, in their wisdom, has seen fit to go back to K-12 certification. So something that was working beautifully was dismantled. I remember testifying when I was still director of the school at Tallahassee and anywhere else I could find hearings to say why it was important to maintain that certification K-8 and 6-12. I explained why it was important to keep the adaptive physical education specialist certification that we had also gained. For efficiency, basically, is how they explained it, they eliminated certifications. They said there was a shortage of teachers and wanted to make it easy for anyone coming from out of state to get a job in Florida. There’s not a shortage of teachers in either adaptive physical education or regular physical education teachers in Florida. It was like, why bother to leave that little stuff there? It’s unfortunate when politicians are making educational decisions without proper background.
AH: They’re constantly looking at the bottom line and thinking of ways to save money rather than to make it a better experience for the children.
LB: That’s right. Efficiency.
AH: What else can you tell us? What led to you becoming a distinguished professor?
LB: It’s based on teaching, research, and service. My teaching has always been good, I think. I pride myself in teaching. I enjoy it very much. I’ve won a number of undergraduate teaching awards for outstanding teaching. I think the area that really separates people is the research area. I mentioned the initial grant and then thirty years of grants where we provided funds for students and special projects. I also was fortunate to be able to get grants that led to my initial research in designing playgrounds for children with disabilities. The first grant I called it Play Learning Centers because that was more desirable for the granting agencies to see that there was a place where children played but were also learning. We did that initial research and it was the first research done regarding accessible playgrounds for children with disabilities. What we discovered was that children with cerebral palsy could engage in meaningful play on a playground if it was designed properly to provide them with access by means of ramps and handrails and things of that sort. We also found that their play behaviors were not really different from that of other children of the same age. These children had the same desires and need to play as everyone else given an environment that they can play like they want to.
That really started the focus of the attention nationally that accessible playgrounds are not only possible for children but that they don’t have to separate. That’s what I was hearing at that time. You’ve got to build a separate playground for these disabled children. Now they’re saying build a playground for children, including for children with disabilities and will not hinder children without disabilities. For many years it was moving so slowly. I shared the information with all the playground manufacturers and they all said the ideas here and the design principles are sound, and I know it would benefit kids, but the bottom line is, will I make any more money than I’m currently making? I’m currently doing pretty well. I really couldn’t guarantee that the profit would change. With the advent of the ADA, the American Disabilities Act, which included in that accessibility to playgrounds people begin to pay attention. AH: It suddenly became necessary?
LB: When California said that you could not build new playgrounds without accessibility, other states joined in. Now, we’re seeing some real progress in that area. I guess I learned that you don’t see change overnight. Nothing seems to happen that quickly, whether it’s gas mileage in cars being reduced or accessible playgrounds or restaurants or whatever. It certainly came faster than I thought it would when the ADA came to affect. After that study and publishing the results and so forth, I continued to design over a hundred different custom design models here in the Tampa area, throughout Florida, and even nationally for different groups. I did this free of charge as part of my professional service that the University expected me to do as a faculty member.
My rule of thumb was if a money making corporation approached me I would charge them a modest fee. I did two designs for Publix Supermarket for their day care center at their corporate headquarters. I charged them because I pay them every time I go in for my groceries. If it was any non-profit group I didn’t charge for the design. These were wooden structures that I designed and that were built usually by them or by a contractor. It was gratifying to see the number of playgrounds that have been built and the children who were able to use them even before the American with Disabilities Act came into affect. That’s probably what I’m best known for. It’s unique and there’s publicity associated with it. It’s really been a relatively small part of my professional activities.
With Dr. Steve Klesius, we teamed together and we did the “I’m Special” videotapes on a grant from the U.S. Office of Education. Those were usually designed to prepare teachers of physical education to become adaptive physical education specialists. The fifteen tapes, which were fifteen minutes each in length, were highly successful. There were over 400 copies distributed promptly after the grant. Then we started getting requests from people to help them use the videotapes in their classes. We got a second grant to do training on the use of the videotapes on a nationwide basis. There we were able to include 350 people from universities and from state departments of education representing 44 states. We would provide training on how we use the tapes in our program. We gave each state Department of Education a copy of the tape with permission to make as many copies as they needed. Those 400 copies grew in multiples within each state. They were used and still are used extensively in the United States and in Brazil.