Spring 2020 – first FIG meeting (3/30/20)
At our 1st meeting of Spring, eight of us met up on Webex. It was great to have some new folks join us – a warm welcome to Thomas, Melisa, Tyronne, and Gabriela! In terms of the ongoing CUNY First rollout, we received word from Stella that things are moving slowly because CUNY First’s application to the U.S. Department of Education has now been delayed due to COVID-19. The plan had been for this Fall, 2020 semester to be the first “live” semester for the program at 5 campuses across the city, including 5 students entering Kingsborough as full-fledged, registered students with all the rights that entails (including being in CUNY First and having full Blackboard access). This timeline now appears to be in doubt, but we will continue to monitor the situation.
In the meantime, several FIG members shared different experiences and information about their current Melissa Riggio (MR) students. It appears that students in some classes had access to Blackboard, but now have disappeared or been withdrawn from the classes. Others reported that their MR students never had Blackboard access, but they are continuing to work with them through other means (e.g. Webex videoconferencing or websites outside of Blackboard). We all expressed that we would love to still have MR students included in our classes, and we would support them learning to use the requisite technology as best we could. To the best of our knowledge, Melissa Riggio students at KCC have officially been withdrawn from all classes for the semester, despite the fact that some folks within CUNY-wide Disability Services had expressed that MR students should be continuing. Unfortunately, there has been little communication to instructors with MR students or the larger KCC community about these decisions, leading to some confusion.
Several of us plan to (or already are in the process of) communicating with Melissa Riggio in different ways, including with director Ife, who joined us at a previous FIG, and with KCC’s new liason from MR – Jason Lau. We can all share what we learn with each other. I have reached out to Jason to welcome him to KCC, invite him to join our regular FIG meetings, and to reaffirm our commitment to including students from MR and promoting inclusion in general. I also asked him if he could share more details about the decision to withdraw MR students from classes. Based on another email that a FIG member received, the decision was made by KCC due to the uncertainty created by our new remote learning mediums. I would be interested to hear more about AHRC/MR’s perspective on the situation, and whether this is occurring at all five CUNY campuses that house Melissa Riggio. I will share what I learn.
In terms of our goals for the semester, we arrived at a few key priorities. Please feel free to respond to this list if you have things to add to our goals and priorities for Spring.
1. Helping to clarify the situation with MR students, and supporting their maximum inclusion moving forward.
2. Collectively thinking about curriculum and/or courses in our respective departments that would benefit CUNY Unlimited students. We would like to help these students acquire the flexible, but targeted skill sets they will need for employment. If we develop some ideas around this (e.g. Don’s ideas for connecting students to recreational therapy and culinary arts through his department), we could potentially provide useful input on the development of the various certificates that CUNY Unlimited students will be earning. We have some time to think about this before they arrive on our campus, so let us know if you have ideas about this, and we can discuss it further in our next meeting.
3. Since we’re spending a lot of time at home, let’s watching some disability-related films and discuss them! Thanks to Lisa, who has procured the film “Summer in the Forest” (trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLf1rx2RPrE) which is a great film that takes us to see an alternative developed in France in the 1960s to the institutionalization and other forms of ableism. We decided we wanted to watch this back in the Fall and so it seems now is an especially good opportunity! I believe Lisa could share access to the film virtually so that we can all watch it.
4. In addition, for those of us with Nexflix, “Crip Camp” is now streaming, which is a film about a camp for people with disabilities in upstate NY (1950s – 1970s) that was an incubator for many of the leaders of the Disability Rights Movement in the US, including Judith Heumann. Here is a very positive review of the film from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/24/crip-camp-review-rousing-netflix-documentary-traces-disability-rights-movement
Shoot me an email and let me know if you’d be up watching one or both films and discussing them in our next FIG meeting.
Take care and stay safe everyone!
~Jeremy
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