At our final FIG meeting of the Spring, ten participants joined us on Webex, including Sue Carpenter again calling in from the U.K.! Jason and Kensaku from Melissa Riggio also joined us to chat.

We began with our “Movie Chat,” where we discussed both “Summer in the Forest” and “Crip Camp” (on Netflix). This was an excellent discussion, and makes us think we should do more of this in the future. We learned from both the residential commune model depicted in rural France and Palestine, which was revolutionary in the 60s when it was created as a humane alternative to institutionalization of people with disabilities. The creator of this model (which has been replicated in many countries around the world) was a religious former military officer who had a humane alternative vision. Sue insightfully compared this to the “Steiner model” of education, which would be useful for us all to learn more about.

We also had a spirited discussion of “Crip Camp,” which depicts a camp in upstate New York where the future leaders of the disability rights movement (teens at the time) met each other and bonded, being seen by each other as real human beings for the first time, rather than “that crippled kid” which is how many viewed them back in their home schools and communities. This was a really inspiring film, because it showed actual footage of the 1977 building occupations in San Francisco around the fight to enact Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. We saw testimony from Ed Roberts, Judith Heumann, and other well known leaders of the disability rights movement. We also saw how community support from the Black Panthers in providing meals for the protesters was key to their being able to last as long as they did without leaving the building until they won their demands! This connection between the civil rights, Black Power, and Disability Rights movements (along with today’s Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements) was a very powerful one that we said should be shared among our faculty and students.

The film also showed footage from the 1990 “Capitol Crawl” in which people in wheelchairs left their chairs to crawl up the U.S. Capitol steps in Washington, DC! This created enormous pressure on the government to act to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities, and resulted in the passage of ADA in 1990. We discussed how viewing this film should be an assignment in our classes related to disabilities, because it changes students thinking from seeing people with disabilities as passive and helpless “victims” for whom protective laws were passed, to seeing the truth – that people with disabilities have been and are powerful fighters and activists who have organized to demand and win their civil rights in the face of discriminatory and oppressive forces.

In the second part of our meeting, Lisa presented a wonderful PowerPoint that illustrated key points from the NC-NET document that outlines 8 “soft skills” that have been identified by employers as key to the job success of people with (and without) disabilities. Lisa illustrated the importance of communication skills in work settings, and demonstrated a classroom activity that can help to build these skills, as well as sharing her own rubrics focusing on communication skills during oral presentations. Jeremy followed this with a brief presentation on teamwork skills, another key soft skill, that faculty at KCC are working on building through a variety of collaborative projects and student groupwork. One takeaway from this is the need to directly focus on building skills for respectful communication, group accountability, and cooperative spirit before merely assigning students to groups for presentations and projects. Professor Lea Fridman had also shared valuable materials on teamwork with KCC staff, and we discussed reaching out to create a network of “expert” staff and faculty who have insights into these 8 soft skills and activity build these skills in their classes.

Because KCC classes are so varied and rich in promoting these soft skills, we feel that future CUNY Unlimited Students would benefit from being able to take a variety of classes to build these key job skills. While we learned that, due to delays related to the pandemic and national DOE processing of CUNY Unlimited’s application, CUNY Unlimited will be start in Fall 2020 as planned, we are hopeful that the program will roll out soon and in our FIG we want to prepare the ground for these students to have an inclusive and educationally beneficial experience when they arrive on our campus. We are hopeful to have Melissa Riggio students in our classes in the Fall (since we unfortunately did not have them this Spring semester) given that KCC has had more time to prepare for remote learning with these students. This will of course be a key area of work for our FIG looking forward into next school year.

We also wanted to share an updated Melissa Riggio Video with Presidents of both the College of Staten Island and Hostos Community College talking about their experiences with the program, the first link below. Another inspiring Melissa Riggio video that students seem to enjoy is linked below. It is great because we see the mentors and students with Intellectual Disability interacting, which shows the power of the “social model” of disability under which we are working. Feel free to share this with students to let them know the opportunities KCC is helping to create with Melissa Riggio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiITPA9iSWg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgGf8ag0DTA&t=4sI

Finally, we are very proud of the 6 Melissa Riggio students that nevertheless are graduating this Spring, as Jason shared with us!

Thanks for a great school year everyone. We will see you again in the Fall!

~Jeremy Sawyer

At our 2^nd FIG meeting of the Spring, ten participants joined us on Webex, including Sue Carpenter calling in from the U.K.! Jason and Kensaku from Melissa Riggio also joined us to chat.

Sue updated us on her work overseas during her sabbatical, where she is involved with some very progressive research at University of Kent with research teams that include people with disabilities themselves as an integral part of the team (illustrating the old demand from the disability rights movement, “Nothing about us without us!”). She also shared an interesting cultural / political comparison between the U.S. and U.K., wherein the U.K. is more progressive in terms of providing internships and employment for people with disabilities, and the population at large is more knowledgeable about disability in general than the U.S.

At the same time, however, perhaps largely because of the civil rights movement that ended racial segregation in the U.S., which then led to the disability rights movement, we have more inclusive higher education opportunities for people with disabilities (as well as a history of open admissions and community colleges that welcome all students). By comparison, students with disabilities are more segregated and excluded from higher education the U.K., though there is interest in more inclusive models, which Sue is helping to further in her work. Thanks for joining us and sharing this update, Sue!

In keeping with this “cross-cultural comparison” theme, at the end of the meeting (to jump ahead) we decided to watch two films, “Summer in the Forest,” which gives insight into innovative models for people with intellectual disability in France and Palestine, and “Crip Camp” on Netflix which covers a camp in upstate NY for people with disabilities that Judith Heumann and other founders of the disability rights movement attended. We will compare and contrast these films in our next meeting to gain further insights.

Jason and Kensaku shared that although students at KCC were withdrawn from classes this semester after we unexpectedly went remote, we are hoping that they will be able to attend with full Blackboard access in the Fall, while it is still uncertain whether will we be in distance learning or not. We hope to learn from the experiences of the other CUNY campuses whose Melissa Riggio students continued with remote learning this semester, and we all thought reaching out to faculty at other campuses who are active around these issues would be a good idea. Ideally, some folks from these other campuses could join us at our next FIG meeting. That way, we can help to generalize lessons among the faculty at KCC who will hopefully have Melissa Riggio students in the Fall. It sounded like the Melissa Riggio students were rather disappointed upon being withdrawn from classes this semester, so we hope that we can help to give them a positive and inclusive experience in the Fall.

Finally, we began to discuss how we can support CUNY Unlimited students in the Fall and beyond by identifying particular classes at KCC in each of our departments that promote key skills that will be useful for employment of students with disabilities. Lisa shared a useful article that framed this matter around 8 key areas of “soft skills” that employers themselves have identified as lacking in job applicants. An important point that emerged in our discussion was that students with intellectual (and other) disabilities many times can obtain a job, but they later lose it due to difficulties with communication, teamwork, interpersonal skills, or not understanding how best to advocate for themselves on the job (as well as employer misunderstandings or lack of flexibility). We plan to discuss this further next meeting, launching our discussion from the 8 categories, and thinking about what classes already emphasize these skills at KCC, and how we might integrate these important job skills further into our teaching and curriculum.

Thanks for a great meeting everyone! Our next meeting will likely be mid or late May.

~Jeremy Sawyer

Spring 2020 – first FIG meeting (3/30/20)

At our 1^st 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