The Case About Amy

16. Struggling and Succeeding

Struggling and Succeeding Ofall the public schools I had seen that had done good work with children with disabilities, one stuck in my mind, because it had received no foundation grants and was included in no nationally touted educational programs. It was Public School 213 in Bayside, New York, which I had visited back in 1982 while working on Seven Special Kids. P.S. 213 was on the surface just another public school in the New York City system. An ordinary school constructed in 1956 in a solidly middle-class Jewish, Irish, and Italian neighborhood, it had not been built to deal with a high proportion of children with disabilities. But young people did not stay in that part of Bayside, and gradually, as the neighborhood aged, it became one ofmiddle-class adults and few young children. Because ofthis and its architectural adaptability to wheelchairs, in 1964 the school became the site of a unit serving physically handicapped students from a much broader geographical area. Established as a place where children with disabilities were welcome, it naturally attracted more ofthem in succeeding years. My interest in the school originally had stemmed from an article I had read by Dr. Odey Raviv, coordinator of the resource program for the school. He had described a kind of vigorous integration of activities involving mainstream students and those with disabilities that took account of every child's real abilities.* I had arrived in time to be briefed by the • "Mainstreamed Handicapped Children: Challenge to Teachers," Behavior Today, January 5, 1981. Copyrightfflitvlateria/ Struggling and Succeeding school's principal, Malcolm Cooper. I asked him ifhe could give me a picture of how the school operated. He answered with a detailed description of a recent intramural basketball game in which all students, including those in wheelchairs, participated. I was still groping with that image-wishing I had been there-when, on my way to Raviv's office, I spotted a boy in a wheelchair being pushed along the hallway by another boy. They were both about twelve years old, I judged. The boy in the wheelchair kept turning around to look up at and speak to the boy who was pushing him. The boy doing the pushing seemed to be paying close attention. Now and then, he spoke briefly and when that happened, the one in the wheelchair turned back to him again, leaning up to speak while his chauffeur nodded. I forgot about this scene temporarily as Raviv talked with me about the school. As he described it, my impression was that P.S. 213 was using all potential resources to the utmost. Students tutored students. Parents were involved in night programs at the school. A group ofolder persons-stroke victims undergoing physical rehabilitation-came to the school two afternoons a week to help in the tutoring process. Walking about the school, I saw this happening and absorbed the spirit of the school, which was as easygoing as it was collaborative. Everything I encountered made me feel that learning was a twenty-four-hour-a-day experience here, and that it would include life and value lessons not necessarily on the menu of the average public school. "They see it all," Raviv told me, when I mentioned this, "dwarfs, kids with speech problems, kids in wheelchairs, everything. ... There's very little name-calling or laughing at what handicapped kids look like or sound like or what they can't do.. . . If these typical kids went into a store, they wouldn't have any trouble dealing with a handicapped salesperson." Psychologist Robert Kleck's experiments, which had shown aversion and avoidance on the part of people confronted by individuals with disabilities , also showed a lessening in these tensions with repeated exposure. Studies of the behavior of hearing-impaired and hearing students in the same classroom suggested that physical proximity was not in itselfa guarantee of social interaction or social acceptance. More important, it appeared , was the willingness of teachers to develop social communication skills. Meeting with another staff member, I recalled the boy pushing another boy in a wheelchair and mentioned them. The staff member knew the two Copyrighte>l1Material Chapter 16 boys and what was going on between them. The boy in the wheelchair was tutoring the other boy in mathematics, she told me.The image has lingered in my mind over the years as an example ofa perfect mutual assistance pact and also...