Welcome to the Sensitivity Awareness Workshop (SAW)

Move beyond assumptions
about students with special needs

Published by Inclusive Education Programs, May 2006

Lisa Cronin Miller knows all the common assumptions teachers and nondisabled students have of children with special needs. She has advocated for 14 years for her daughter Rachel, who has been diagnosed with mental retardation, autistic tendencies, global developmental delays and epilepsy.

Change attitudes with activities

Lisa Cronin Miller has done extensive research with therapists and is always coming up with new activities to simulate different disabilities.

"I found out how the dyslexic mind flips 'd' and 'b' and 'p' and 'q,' and how a lot of times children will see a stick with a circle on it instead of recognizing a letter," she said.

Steven Teuber, Lee County, FL, school board chairman, said taking a few minutes to try a few tasks would change the face of inclusive education.

"I think it should be added to state standards for educators," he said. "This type of training would be instrumental for our teachers and students in the public education system."

Here are some activities you can try with teachers and nondisabled students in your district:

Tie down your thumbs and try counting coins to see what it's like to live without gross motor skills.
Tie up an arm and try to put on an outfit or try to play catch with a ball to see what it's like for people with impaired limbs.
Put on a blindfold and try to put a puzzle together to experience blindness.
Set up a mirror box in front of a pad of paper and try to write your name upside down to experience dyslexia

A founder and president of Sensitivity Awareness Workshop, Inc. in Fort Myers, FL, Miller has seen people shy away from her daughter as if her condition were contagious. Others completely ignore her because they see her as a nonentity.

Adults often talk slowly and loudly to a child with a disability, even if he just has a physical impairment. Others dumb down their discussions, even if a young person only has behavioral difficulties.

"They have no understanding, which causes them to have no empathy," Miller said. "They have to walk in these children's shoes in order to understand it."

Indeed, having your district participate in activities that demonstrate what it is like to live with disabilities can build empathy for students with special needs and foster an understanding of the need for inclusion. Activities can also help your teachers and administrators better adhere to the IDEA by providing educational benefit to students with special needs. Miller offers such an opportunity with her workshop, for which she has researched with occupational, speech and other therapies.

Use immersion to change attitudes

Program participants typically break up into groups of four and go from workstation to workstation, taking about three minutes for each task.

Steven Teuber, chairman of the Lee County School Board in southwest Florida, experienced one of Miller's workshops last year. He participated in 10 different activities that simulated a physical, mental or learning disability, including dyslexia and blindness.

"My biggest one was trying to write by looking at your hand in the mirror upside down," Teuber said, recalling an exercise that mimicked a learning disability. "I was telling my hand to go right but it was going left."

Miller recalls another teacher who did a math exercise in which the numbers were flipped around and upside down. After the task, the woman wept over how harshly she had treated a former student with dyslexia and promised to apologize to him and to all of her students and to ask for forgiveness.

Both adults had gained a sense of what students must go through when they are included in a general classroom and trying to keep up with their nondisabled peers.

"The frustration you feel is really uncanny, " Teuber said. "Then you realize you just did it for a few minutes, and others experience it their entire lives. You realize what good attitudes a lot of these kids have despite their physical, mental or emotional challenges."

Reinforce need for compassion

Miller hopes that teachers and administrators experiencing these challenges for the first time will change their attitudes toward their students with special needs.

"You'd think with an IEP, teachers would be more compassionate but some teachers, even with an IEP in place, still aren't accepting of their students and aren't allotting for their disability," she said. "Some are stressed with a packed schedule, dealing with standardized tests and seeing how fast they can get through all the material. But once they walk a mile in their shoes, they become very emotional and realize the years of insensitivity they have had toward these children."

Nondisabled students also react dramatically to the tasks. "After doing all the tasks, a fourth-grader said he wished he had never made fun of people 'my whole life'," Miller said. "I hope that the next time he sees somebody with disabilities in school or in his community, he won't point or laugh."

For more information about the Sensitivity Awareness Workshop, call 239.466.6344 or visit www.sawoneheart.org.

SAW of SWFL, Inc. is a Florida 501(c)3 Non Profit Corporation. All gifts of cash or securities are fully tax deductible under IRS law. A copy of the official registration and financial information may be obtained from the division of consumer services by calling toll free (800-435-7352) within the state. Registration does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by the state.
© 2003 Sensitivity Awareness Workshop of Southwest Florida, Inc. All Rights Reserved.