NEW PALESTINE — When she was asked to sit in a chair and play volleyball and not move around like she’s capable of doing, Isabella Gizzi, an eighth-grade student at New Palestine Junior High School, felt restricted and a little frustrated.
Isabella comes from an athletic family and is able to accomplish pretty much anything she sets her mind to in the classroom and in sports. That’s why, when she was asked to give up some of her skills, it was an eye-opening experience.
"This was something that will stick with you," Isabella said. "Some of the things we did were really hard."
From putting corn kernels in shoes and trying to walk, to trying to do things blindfolded, it was a week of learning about children with disabilities and how they adapt to life by focusing on their abilities — and not what they can’t do.
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Angela Hornsby and other resource teachers at the school presented a program to all general education students last week called Ability Awareness.
The idea was for the students to get a first-hand experience of what students with disabilities go through every day. The exercise helped the students focus on the abilities those students use to accomplish goals, rather than focusing on limitations.
"We like to focus on the person first," Hornsby said. "It’s the person before the disability."
School officials had a speaker from Down Syndrome Indiana speak to their seventh-grade class last year and build on that program this year thanks to a $500 grant from McDonald’s used to buy supplies for activities.
The teachers — Hornsby, Erin Amones and Tammy Boser — worked with other educators at the school to make the learning memorable. The students had a chance to learn something new in each classroom schoolwide that gave them a better understanding of what their fellow classmates with disabilities face each day.
"Now that I know more about what these kids go through, it makes me want to interact more with them," said Tyler Roberts, a seventh-grade student.
He described the weeklong program as a "big life experience" and said it was hard, even challenging.
His mother, Katie Roberts, is an essential-skills assistant at Brandywine Elementary School and has talked to him some about the work she does with students with disabilities, so he knew some of what to expect. But, he said, the first-hand experience was illuminating.
"We got to experience what they go through 24/7," Tyler said. "I did it for five minutes, and it was hard."
In addition to gaining respect for the classmates with disabilities, students got to learn basic Braille and sign language techniques, among other things. When students had social studies class, they focused on visual and hearing issues. Math class time was spent working on sensory challenges. Language arts classes focused on reading issues. Science classes heard from guest speakers. And PE and art class time was spent with students doing a physical project.
To learn more about how students with reading disabilities are challenged, the teachers had students read via the Stroop test — a color-based program to examine their skills. The students admitted the project was more than they anticipated.
Teachers then asked students to imagine how they might feel if they had to do that type of learning all day long. The educators then showed the students how kids with reading issues can adapt via a screen reader or a special program to hammer home the idea of focusing on their abilities and not what they can’t do.
"I was so blown away with how our general education students responded," Amones said. Some students approached her after some of the tasks. Students wanted to know how they can make children with disabilities feel more included, something she wasn’t expecting.
"Teaching our kids how to talk with them, what to say to them, what is OK and what is not, is big," Amones said.
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Abilities Awareness Week at New Palestine Junior High School
As part of Disability Awareness Month, students at New Palestine Junior High School took part in sensory, visual, hearing, mental and physical challenges.
Students learned the difference between a visible and invisible disability focusing on less obvious disabilities such as asthma, arthritis, allergies, epilepsy, diabetes and hearing loss.
Students learned to approach students with disabilities and to focus on their abilities, rather than what they can’t do.
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