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Mt. View students learn different ways on Disability Day

Shaylon Cochran/KDLL

 

Students at Mt. View Elementary in Kenai learned a little about empathy and acceptance Friday.

The school had a Diversity Day, highlighting the challenges and opportunities to living with a disability.

In one activity, third and fourth graders took turns navigating a short slalom course down one of the halls, scooting along on little carts using just one hand to make it to the end and back.

It was one of several stations where students experienced a little of what it’s like to live with a number of different disabilities.

Karl Kircher is the principal at Mt. View. He says in a school that serves lots of kids with disabilities, the day’s exercises were meant to help overcome some of the stigma disabled people put up with.

“As a large, open enrollment, neighborhood school, we’re blessed to have a variety of programs that help students with disabilities. Our students see that on a daily basis and this is just another way to help them get a little deeper understanding of it.”

He says the idea to bring together experts and set aside a day for activities to shed a little light on life with a disability came from a regular staff meeting with the special education department.

“The impetus was just hey, seems like a cool thing to do. You bring artists to school, you bring musicians to school, you teach kids about all kinds of things and it would just make sense to teach kids about disability awareness as well. We have six people in our special education department thinking how do we up our game? That’s how we got it.”

In another room, students are finding out what it takes to get through the day with a visual impairment. Kircher says a high school student helped out ahead of time by making cards with braille for the kids to study.

In the library, Maggie Winston is helping kids learn how to draw and make art in a different way; by gripping the brush with their teeth.

 

Winston is in a wheelchair, and works at the Independent Living Center in Soldotna. Teaching the kids to draw without using their hands comes from her other line of work as a visual artist.

 

“We’ve been talking about that a little bit and asking kids what can people do, what can’t people do and just trying to change the fundamental and societal attitudes people have toward people with disabilities and seeing that really, anyone can do anything," Winston says.