October 20, 2022
“You did it! Nice job,” Nicole Holder, one of the Individual Needs Center teachers said, intercepting a ball from the laundry basket set twenty feet from a LABS student volunteer.
“But you took it from me,” the student said, perplexed. “I didn’t actually do the work.”
“How else could we help her get the ball in the basket without doing it for her?” Mrs. Holder asked.
One of her students piped up right away.
“Backhand,” he said, and Mrs. Holder followed up. “Yes, we could try throwing it a different way. What other ideas do you have?”
The room was silent; students were pondering. The basket still stood twenty feet away and the student who had volunteered for the activity still stood before it.
“Did I give you any other rules?” Mrs. Holder asked, prompting them to think. “I just said the goal was to get it into the basket, right?”
The class nodded.
“Could you move the basket closer?” someone offered, and Mrs. Holder nudged it forward with her foot. She handed the ball back to the volunteer, and encouraged the volunteer to toss it at the basket once more. This time, it went in, so Mrs. Holder moved it back a little bit and gave the student another chance. Once more, the ball went in, and Mrs. Holder increased the distance between the student tossing the ball, and the basket she was trying to reach. This negotiation continued until the distance was exactly the same as it was to begin with, but this time when she attempted the throw, the student had gained enough confidence to meet the challenge.
“Learning is just small steps to a bigger goal,’ Mrs. Holder told them, explaining that the best accommodations are those that provide both challenge and agency. “We shouldn’t expect students to hit it out of the park the first time,” she told them. “And if they do, then why are we teaching it? We need to provide access without denying them the chance to feel the satisfaction of success.”
Following the reflection, Mrs. Holder had her students distribute materials for the next activity. While this happened, she asked the LABS students to pair off. Once they had their supplies, she instructed one partner to put on a blindfold while the other partner hid a candy somewhere inside (or just outside) the room. The person who hid the candy then had to serve as the guide, helping the other person find the candy without running into a wall.
As you can imagine, the room turned lively rather quickly, bodies bumped into tables and chairs, and sometimes into “Ferris,” the school facility dog who spends most of his days in INC North. Eventually student leaders grew comfortable using precise language, advising their partner to “move three steps to the left,” or to “turn 90 degrees to the right,” or to “stop, bend down and pet Ferris, and then step a little to the left and walk forward.”
Once they found the candy, some groups thought they were finished, and one of the guides said to her partner, “I’m so glad you were the blindfolded one. I don’t think I could deal with doing this today.”
“Okay. Now, I want you to switch,” Mrs. Holder said a few seconds later.
The student who previously expressed relief sank into distress. “I don’t want to deal with being blind right now,” she said.
Mrs. Holder reminded them they had to keep their gloves on until they unwrapped the candy. “People with disabilities can’t ‘take off’ their disability, so it’s important for you to empathize with the struggle.”
I glanced over at the student who didn’t want to “deal,” and I didn’t have to say a word. The activity inspired the very empathy it was designed to evoke.