Education
Perspectives on Parenting©
by Nancy Lambert Davenport
Nancy Davenport's Column:
For Richardson News 10-15-00
Copyright Nancy Lambert Davenport 2000
"Area students making differences in lives of disabled"
We all want to improve education. We enlist experts from universities; we stir up the politicians; we increase
standards for tests; we send teachers back to school; we make class sizes smaller. We hire; we fire; we sweat; we
worry; we wring our hands. We do all this, and we forget to ask the consumers themselves - the kids what needs to
change to make things better and how to do it.
Over in another part of town, not far from Love Field, a group of kids at Obadiah Knight Elementary in Dallas ISD took one part of education into their own hands and began to change things. Two classes of sixth-grade Talented and Gifted students (selected students who may benefit from some educational enhancements) last year created, funded and produced an interactive Web site that encouraged Internet visitors to learn about people with disabilities. They encourage visitors to learn about respecting, valuing, and including people with disabilities. They set up a contest to challenge other schools to create activities and programs that would help people with disabilities be more a part of the community.
As part of their own learning process, they wrote letters to the editor of a newspaper guilty of stereotyping people with mental retardation. They volunteered at a pre-school with kids who have cerebral palsy. They launched, a disability-awareness, silver ribbon campaign at the Dallas city Council, Chamber of Commerce, and their own school. They recruited 25 teachers to teach, and as a result 500 students at their school participated in a disability awareness curriculum developed by ARC. They scrounged a free production of a documentary video of their experiences. In it they showed the advantages of inclusion. The video's distribution encouraged other schools to start their own All Kids Can program. ARC of Dallas is now actively marketing the program.
This year's class is off to a running start. Piggy-backing on last year's theme, students have begun problem-solving the real community problem of negative attitudes and segregation of people with disabilities. They named themselves the VALUE Kids Valuing All Lives, Understanding Everyone. They have created a skit showing the value of inclusion. After raising their own funds, they took the skit on the road and have already performed it numerous times. They hope to have VALUE Kids groups start up in other schools with help from their Web site and skit.
What appeals to me most about all these goings on at Obadiah Knight Elementary is that through these bright kids' minds and through the problem-solving skills that they are honing, they will be able to create new strategies for advocacy which are not tarnished by long-term experience in the world. Their motives are pure. They just want to help their buddies with disabilities get along better in the world. If you visit their Web site at http//wwwallkidscan.org, you will see they are succeeding where their elders have failed. Dallas ISD should be proud.
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Nancy Lambert Davenport
EMAIL: nancdave@swbell.net
URL: http://www.nancyldavenport.com