Disabilities Awareness Project

1. Disabilities Awareness Project Brandon Glauner Melissa Marsing Rachell Rhoads

2. Summary • In the fall of 2012 the student TEACH club went to San Diego for a conference, while there we went to the Museum of Man and saw the display “Access/ability,” of how people with disabilities function in society. We were inspired by this display and wanted to bring it back to the schools in our community. As a joint effort with the TEACH club we decided to build and present this to local schools. In the brainstorming process for this project Rachael and I presented the idea to the club and got their go ahead. We decided to work with other clubs on this project so that we could have the largest impact. I contacted Mary Christy-Feis with the community service club to see if they would be interested in using some of their funding to help support us. They were excited about it and funded us $300.00 to build the project.

3. We approached the woodworking club to build a wheel chair ramp, and possibly some demonstration doors. Unfortunately we were not able to work together on it this time do to scheduling problems. I also approached MaritaDeBoard at the student disabilities center on campus. She gave me some good feedback on ideas we could use for stations. Shaleen Bradley, the special education teacher at Harrison Elementary, also gave me some fantastic ideas of ways to demonstrate “invisible” disabilities. At the outset we were hoping to have a project we could take to several schools, and/or give an open to the public display at CSI. With time running low though and some setbacks with displays not being made we settled for a much more scaled back, but still successful approach. About this time Melissa joined our group, she was already a member of the teach club, and was looking for a different sustainability project to join after hers did not work out. We met a few times after class and outside of school to decide what demonstrations we would be able to design and set up and what we would be able to fit into our classroom where we were putting on the project.

4. We settled on four stations. What is it like for a person who is blind to get around? What is it like to write for a person with dyslexia? How do people who are deaf communicate? What is it like to have a communications disability? We shopped for supplies on April 19th, and on April 20th we got together and began to build our project. We met in the SUB and built 70 disabilities passports, created a maze and a coloring book, and made our signs for our stations. On the 24th of April we went to Harrison Elementary School and into the classroom of Mrs. Mason to set up our project for the students of her first and second grade science class. We had the help of Cassie Shafer And Sunny Smith. I ran the blindness station, Mellissa ran the dyslexia station, Cassie ran the deaf station and Rachael ran the communications disorder station. We welcomed the kids into the classroom had them sit and listen while we asked them what they knew about disabilities before hand and then broke them into groups to work through the stations. After all the children went through the stations we sat them back down and asked them what they had learned. At the end of the class we gave them a coloring book about disabilities to take home and share with their parents.

5. Building the project

7. The results of cutting, stapling, and writing seventy passports. Before After

8. Pictures from the day

17. Implementation

18. Implementation

19. Documentation • http://www.museumofman.org/access/ABILITY • http://www.care.com/special-needs-teaching-your-child-about-peers-with-special-needs-p1017-q598.html • http://librarianbrain.wordpress.com/tag/conditions-and-diseases/ • http://www.coloringpagebook.com/disabilities-10-people-coloring-pages/disabilities-10-people-coloring-pages-2/ • http://www.access-board.gov/adaag/html/adaag.htm • MaritaDeBoard-interview • Shaleen Bradley –interview

20. Reflection • We started out with loftier goals than we were able to achieve. However, I learned as much from our failures as our successes. I feel that we were able to make an impact on the kids we reached with this project and we are not giving up, next year this project, ran by the TEACH club, will try to expand and go to more schools. I was surprised by the lack of knowledge in children in 1st and 2nd grade about disabilities. In the future I would suggest getting more of the project built a semester ahead of the presentation, so that we are ready to roll out the project to schools in the spring. I enjoyed seeing the light bulb come on above these kids heads, when they realized what it meant to have a disability. I recognized it from my own light bulb in seeing the Access/ability display in San Diego. That kind of learning is transformative.

21. In bringing this project to these kids, I think we gave them a new prospective on people in their communities with disabilities. I was afraid at times that the project would not happen, that we would never get everything we needed to make this project work. However, seeing what a few determined people can do is inspiring to me and raises my hopes of working on future sustainability projects. I know that our experience gained from doing this project will allow us to expand it and bring it to a wider audience. I look forward to bringing it to all the children in the Twin Falls school district, and perhaps one day, beyond to all Idaho schools.

22. Fin