What's Their Life Like?
Writing with their weak hands, piecing puzzles together blindfolded: Fifth-graders get a lesson in sensitivity and find out what it's like to be disabled.

By Jamie Henline
Originally posted on November 7, 2006

Tie your shoe. Button your shirt. Write a paragraph.

They sound like simple tasks.

Now tie your shoe without using your thumbs. Button your shirt with only one hand. Use your less dominant hand to write that paragraph.

Think about doing that every day of your life. Think about doing that for the rest of your life. Would it be frustrating?

That was a sentiment many of the fifth-graders at Pinewoods Elementary expressed Monday during a one-hour Sensitivity Awareness Workshop.

SAW training is designed to help people understand how frustrating and difficult life can be for people with mental, physical and learning disabilities, said Lisa Cronin Miller, founder of the workshop.

Miller founded SAW in 2003, after she heard students ridicule her daughter, Rachal, and a group of students, all of whom have mental or physical disabilities, at a Bonita Middle School dance.

The SAW training started out Monday with a video of Rachal's life, showing footage of one of her seizures when she was 3 months old. She was the first 6-month-old female to be diagnosed with infantile spasms at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Miller said.

Photo: Erik Kellar / Daily News From left, Tyler Jones, 10, Nicole Allison, 9, and Megan Noble, 10, struggle to put on shirts while each has one arm tied behind her back during a workshop at Pinewoods Elementary School on Monday. The exercise was part of a seminar by Sensitivity Awareness Workshop of Southwest Florida Inc., a nonprofit organization founded in 2003 by Lisa Cronin Miller. Miller started the group after witnessing her daughter, Rachal, who has developmental disabilities, being ridiculed at a Bonita Middle School dance. For more information about the group, visit the Web site www.sawoneheart.com.

The seizures deteriorated her brain, and Rachal was diagnosed with global developmental delays, seizure disorder, epilepsy and mental retardation. The 14-year-old, who now attends Ida S. Baker High School, has the mental capacity of a 5-year-old.

You would never know it, looking at the porcelain-skinned girl with dark hair and huge eyes. All it takes is one conversation, Miller said.

"I want you to remember, (people with disabilities) didn't volunteer to be this way," she said during the training.

The very first SAW session was conducted at Bonita Middle, and since then, Miller has traveled to several schools in the district and some businesses. The workshops are sponsored by the Southwest Florida Community Foundation.

"I was just a mom on a mission," said Miller, whose only training came from raising Rachal and talking to countless doctors and therapists to get her daughter help.

More than 6,000 people in the area have been through the training since then, and SAW is exploring ways to take the program national, after several inquiries via the group's Web site, she said.

After the video, the fifth-graders went to one of 10 stations where they were given temporary handicaps and assigned a task. At one station, the trainees were blindfolded and instructed to put together puzzles. At another, they had to say the alphabet with their tongues touching their roofs of their mouths. Students had to read a paragraph of jumbled words and do math problems with the numbers written backward at another station.

"You can't do what you usually do," said Collin MacPherson, 10, as he struggled to cut out a heart shape using his left hand. "It's a good way to get us to understand."

"You feel like you'll get behind. It took a long time," said Alexa Cline, 10.

It took Jake Beckner, 11, no time to notice how difficult it would be to write with his left hand instead of his right. The light scrawl wavered all over the piece of paper, and, as part of the training, he was not allowed to erase.

"Usually, I write fast. It's taking forever, and it's really sloppy" with my left hand, he said.

After a turn at each station, the fifth-graders gathered in front of Miller. When she asked whether the activities were difficult, nearly every hand shot into the air.

The response was different when she asked students to think about how many of them had called someone a "retard." She asked how many of them felt regret.

The room was quiet. Some students started to raise their hands and stopped. Others looked at the floor.

"Before you go to point and laugh, stop and think, 'Oh my gosh, what's their life like?' " Miller said quietly.

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.