By Ed Piper
La Jolla High teacher Tom Atwell is a terror as he rolls around his classroom on campus instructing his AP European History students.
At eye level on his knee scooter, Atwell is right there, right next to students as he lectures and guides his charges in assignments on the district platform.
The long-time swim and water polo coach recently had surgery to correct things wrong with his right foot--"dislocated toes and all sorts of things"--after years of running ultra distances for cancer and for personal training in endurance.
He made quite the scene at the La Jolla girls' water polo game Tues., Jan. 30 at Coggan Pool, stretching out his gimpy leg, which is heavily wrapped in bandages, poolside in the Vikings' corner.
This reporter knows the experience well, having taught summer school at Oxnard High while rolling around in a wheelchair (long before the knee scooter was developed) after surgery on his left ankle due to a basketball injury.
At that time, these were students who didn't know me, and didn't know if I was disabled or recuperating from something. I set up the classroom so that I could roll up and down aisles and coach the students in their English/Language Arts lessons.
Halfway through the six-week summer session, I suddenly was standing in front of class, out of the wheelchair, as the incision on my damaged left ankle began healing up. Boy, were some of them surprised. The lame shall walk!
At that time (in the 1980's), the kneeling carts had not yet been invented, so a wheelchair from Everest and Jennings, procured by a family friend who was an employee there, got me mobile for the summer school teaching assignment.
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