To cross the vivid violet threshold
into Lynchburg, Virginia’s Amazement Square is to enter
a world where art and adolescence colorfully collide.
For the students of Laurel Regional School, who live with
severe mental and physical disabilities, it is to enter a
world of acceptance, learning, and fun.
“This isn’t like a lot of other situations where
kids will come in and tell you what they did, say, over the
weekend,” says Debbie Elliott, Director of Laurel Regional,
which caters to students in five surrounding counties with
severe physical and mental disabilities.
“The communication isn’t always the same. But
you know when they’ve had an Amazement Square experience
because of the excitement in their expressions. It’s
just awesome to hear and see them convey how excited they
are about these experiences.”
Amazement Square is not your typical children’s museum.
And a visit from Elliott’s students, to be sure, is
not your typical field trip. But Amazement Square’s
program for Laurel Regional School, funded in part by a 2005
IMLS Museums for America grant, is about trying to make those
trips as typical as possible.
Judging by the spirited symphony of instruments being played
in the Listen to Rhythm exhibit on a given visit, the explosions
of kaleidoscopic color brushed, rolled, and slathered into
striking murals and portraits, and the smiles and peals of
laughter, it‘s working.
“When we created the museum, we felt that it was important
to serve children of all backgrounds and abilities,”
says Dr. Mort Sajadian, Amazement Square’s executive
director. “The mission of a children’s museum,
of course, is to serve children. But that can be a very general
statement. We incorporated into our philosophy…kids
who are special as well, so that we could provide the kinds
of hands-on activities and programs that could better serve
them.”
In 2002, Amazement Square put this philosophy into action
through “Everyone is Special,” a yearlong exhibition
designed to promote better understanding of disabilities and
those who live with them. With the cooperation of regional
educational institutions and advocates for the disabled, the
popular exhibition featured simulation exercises and activities,
allowing visitors to experience the world as someone with
a hearing, visual, or physical impairment.
“They were able to understand that a disability label
may be a medical diagnosis, but that it does not define one’s
personality,” Sajadian says.
The exhibition would help prepare Amazement Square and the
public for what the museum was set to do next.
So moved were Sajadian and the exhibition’s backers
by the public response to “Everyone is Special,”
they decided to extend its reach.
Visits to facilities and schools for the disabled led them
to Laurel Regional, a school whose 68 students, aged 4-22,
include those with autism, brain damage, Down syndrome, and
impairments that often mean daily reliance on feeding and
breathing tubes. In Laurel, they identified a golden opportunity:
to work with school officials, not only to develop a curriculum
and activities that met Virginia’s rigorous Standard
of Learning requirements, but also to leverage the museum’s
resources to allow the students to be exactly what they were
– kids.
Over the coming months, Sajadian’s staff and school
officials would develop biweekly workshops for students, often
using materials from Amazement Square’s exhibitions.
From horticulture to regional geography, the Olympics, Japanese
culture, and the study of outer space, each of the interactive
sessions was designed to encourage academics, imagination,
and physical movement.
They also included occasional field trips to Amazement Square
on days when the museum was closed and the visits could be
held in a controlled environment.
For Sajadian and school officials, however, the goal was
clear: to use the public response to “Everyone is Special”
and the gradual development of Laurel Regional’s students
to build a relationship between them and the community.
“It’s so often the case that these kids go to
school and are basically put away in a corner away from the
public,” Sajadian says. “It would be so much easier
for us to just bring our tools and suitcases and all the bells
and whistles to their classroom. But the curriculum is just
one element of what we want to accomplish.
“The other is to better and more dynamically educate
the public and put them at ease, so that we can get these
students to interact with the greater community and experience
a new social environment. They would not have had this opportunity
otherwise,” he continues. “There are some parents
who are embarrassed to have their kids in a public setting.
That’s wrong. We need to have these students interacting,
so they can live as normal a life as possible and have a sense
of belonging.”
Over the next couple of years, Amazement Square and Laurel
Regional School would fine tune their programming, upping
the number of hands-on sessions and using new technology aimed
at stimulating the students’ senses and ability to interact.
Students explored basic musical concepts on real instruments
in the museum’s Listen to Rhythm exhibit. They learned
about farm animals and pets in the Big Red Barn and through
partnerships with local zoos and Humane Societies. The Paint
Box exhibit, meanwhile, encouraged them to render their own
masterpieces by painting on glass walls.
In 2006, Amazement Square used its Museums for America grant
to purchase state-of-the-art adaptive technology. This equipment,
known as the Snoezelen Concept, works together to project
light and simulate sunlight, fireworks, clouds, seascapes,
dawn, wilderness, and different shapes. Water bubble columns
teach cause-and-effect and allow students to control items
within their environment, while a wall consisting of 15 different
textures provides different tactile sensations. Chalk and
paint rollers attached to wheelchairs and walkers, meanwhile,
have allowed students to paint murals, make prints and engage
in pogo painting – artwork featured last year in Lynchburg
College’s traveling gallery exhibition, “Shifting
Gears: Young Artists with Disabilities.”
“We have so many students here who come from low-socioeconomic
homes, and this presents them with an opportunity they wouldn’t
ordinarily have to visit an outstanding museum and to take
part in hands-on activities,” says Elliott. “It’s
wonderful to see the social interaction. You always know when
it’s Amazement Square day because the kids are excited.
They recognize the staff coming in from the museum and you’ll
see them giving them high fives.”
That interaction has extended beyond the staff.
School and museum officials tasked with documenting students’
development point to dramatic progress in their ability to
communicate, follow instructions, and focus on tasks. So much
so that field trips to the museum – once only performed
on days when it was closed – now include public days,
alongside visits with classes from area public schools. Recently,
administrators also began allowing parents to accompany their
kids and take part in activities with them.
“One of the most significant accomplishments I have
noted is the way we have been able to integrate the students
into the museum,” says Sarah Hamilton, the museum’s
director of school and outreach programs. “Even with
additional excitement, we have noted a decrease in negative
behavior, fits, and seizures which were common due to overexcitement
and over-stimulation. The visits continue to become more positive
as the students become more acclimated to the museum environment.”
Sajadian agrees.
“No one even thinks twice about it anymore,”
he says. “When we were still sensitizing the public,
we used to let them know the days when we would have a Laurel
School class at the museum. We don’t even need to do
that anymore. They immediately reacted in a way that was so
positive. You could see from smiles and body movements that
they were actually intermingling with the other children.
It has become such a regular part of everyone’s daily
lives.”
The program shows no signs of slowing. In addition to disability
awareness courses and specialized training now offered at
area public schools and colleges, Amazement Square recently
extended the reach of “Everyone is Special” to
include Hutchison Early Education Center, a pre-school for
inner city Lynchburg students with learning disabilities.
“For a lot of the kids down in this region, there are
very few services available when they finish school,”
says Cindie Allen, a classroom teacher at Laurel Regional.
“In my years of teaching, I have always tried to get
my kids out in public and to interact with daily life."
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