So, I wanted to post the link to the Easter Seals site for the "Friends Who Care" program. This is a pretty amazing effort which, as we saw in class yesterday, may still have a long way to go.
Friends Who Care
What struck me the most about this site and its attendant lesson plans, activities and handouts is that Easter Seals is one of the organizations staking a claim to having, as we've said in class, "authority over the language of disability." This is a group which publishes guidelines, does charity work and spends time in the news spotlight. So what happened with "Friends Who Care?" I'm not really sure. Looking through the rest of the site, and the teacher materials, I found an interesting mix of useful activities, attempts to be sensitive and straightforward advertising for the Easter Seals organization. In fact, the videos you can use to show students are far more "testimonials" about the quality of Easter Seals than about the children.
Many of the hands-on style activities in the lesson plans seem innocent and useful enough in conveying a sense of living with a disability to students, but very little guidance is provided to teachers about "answering the tough questions." Students are provided with facts and faced with some scenarios which simulate some disabilities, but what should you do when Little Johnny announces to the class that his little sister is a "retard?" Or what if the Little Suzy in your class is a child with autism? It seems as if the materials were designed entirely with nondisabled students in mind.
Another issue is the language. The testimonials and "quotes" all seem to have one thing in common, they delve into that sympathy language. Terms like, 'regular disability girl' or 'severely autistic' are bandied about, giving the impression that this is more of a commercial than a truly helpful, thoughtful effort.
On a lighter note, because the program is sponsored by Friendly's, students all get ice cream at the end... except in places that don't have a Friendly's... so maybe not a happy ending after all.
Thanks,
Michael
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I still love this quote from your sample:
ReplyDelete"to encourage typically developing children to accept their peers with disabilities as people first and also to find ways to include everyone in school and after-school activities."
I asked Monday what "typically developing children" are. As a parent of a two-year-old, I know my daughter's not developing "typically"--at least according to the assessment test her pediatricain gives us to see how well she is in fact developing. She's atypical because she's developmentally a three-to-four-year-old, which has its own sets of problems (but that's another story for another day).
Another issue is the "person first" idea: "to encourage typically developing children to accept their peers with disabilities as people first [. . .]." So, we accept the person as a person first; then what's second? The disability?