Disability Awarness

show the “fat city tape”. Have an OT come in and simulate what is experienced daily with a disability (ie: feeling things with gloves on, activities blindfolded, etc).

I think the Fat City tape is a good idea - you might want to divide the group up into blue eyes and brown eyes and tell the brown eyes (secretly) that the blue eyes are inferior and should be ignored no matter what they say or do. If this goes on for about ten minutes during a discussion involving the entire group, this might give them something to discuss about learning disabilities and social situations - many is the time I’ve seen children with learning disabilities be excluded from group participation in just this way without it ever being particularly overt at first - other kids just ignore them.

Here is something fun to do that gives people an idea of what it is like to have a learning disability.

Have them put a paper on their forehead and then ask them to write their name.

This gives ordinary people an idea of what it is like to have dysgraphia.

Then, depending on what kind of ham you are, you could

—hold up one of the few well written ones, and say to the group, “Why can’t all of you do it like so and so.”

—accuse them of being unmotivated

etc. etc.

At the end, I always explain to them that the group at least had other people in the group experiencing the same thing.
The child with dysgraphia, on the other hand, feels like you did writing…but sees everyone else writing quickly and easily.

Dale S. Brown
Dialogue with Dale