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CUNY Unlimited 4th Meeting, Spring 2022

May 17, 2022 / Leave a comment

CUNY Unlimited FIG No. 4 (May 13th, 2022)
 
After introductions and news from members, we briefly discussed the FIG’s 4 presentations during KCC’s successful DAWS week in April!  Stella Woodroffe Director of Accessibility thanked the FIG for our  contributions/ presentations. 
We also made progress with plans for an education certificate / focus for MRHEP students. The Education Program Director Denise Farrelly is supportive of the idea as is Kensaku Matsuda MRHEP administrator.  Further dialogue is needed with the CUNY Central as to whether this can be made a formal CUNY Unlimited ‘Education’ focus certificate.
It was suggested that between 6- 8 of the 16 courses the MRHEP students who are interested in a career in education take, be Education courses. A field course and placement in an educational setting would be a requirement in the last of the 4 years. Some MRHEP students may not have an idea as to what their career path may be when entering college, so flexibility would be needed with the requirements and the timing. A sequence of courses would however be followed. With a new Special education degree planned at KCC for Fall 2023 this initiative would be welcomed.
We also discussed whether there could be an assigned Education student (or alumni) as a mentor and or a work study program student allocated mentoring a student particularly in the field- working in a school classroom.  MRHEP admin. suggested they would be able to pay for the finger printing needed for students to have field experience in a school.
Most importantly we discussed the fact that DOE and day care centers require employees to have a high school diploma. Therefore, once MRHEP students had completed the certificate they may not realistically be able to find employment in an educational setting.  Although many MRHEP students may not have a high school diploma, they still have the ability to fully contribute in an educational setting. Further information needs to be acquired as to how other TPSID programs are able to circumnavigate this and also whether State regulations maybe different from City regulations. It was suggested that private schools or arts programs (for example ‘Mommy and me’) may be able to employ a MRHEP graduate without a high school diploma.
To be continued! Thank you for time and interest in this important work.

CUNY Unlimited 1st Meeting, Spring 2022

March 7, 2022 / Leave a comment

CUNY Unlimited 1st Meeting, Spring 2022

On 3/1/22 our FIG hosted special guest Peter Santiago, LMHC, who is Associate Director/Counselor for AAS services and coordinating the Disability Awareness Week (DAW) at KCC this year from April 4th – 7th. Twelve faculty, staff, and student alumni attended the meeting.

The FIG collectively discussed ideas for the DAW, some of which have been solidified and others that we further developed today. The theme of this year’s DAW, coined by Stella, is “the whole students” to indicate a wholistic focus on well being (social, emotional, and more) rather than just access to higher education or a narrow academic focus.

A few DAW sessions we discussed that are relatively firm are:

Mon. 4/4 – 11:30am – Inclusive international music outreach, with Sue and Margot

Mon. 4/4 – 12:40pm – Colleagues from the Education Department are doing a session on “First impressions of people with disabilities as portrayed in children’s books.”

Ben Hanon’s proposal, “Not Despite, Not Because: Exploring Attitudes about Excellence in People with Disabilities.”

Our main discussion focused on our FIG organizing and facilitating two conceptually linked events – a film screening and student stories event – for Tue. 4/5 (perhaps an 11:30am and 1:50pm slot), encouraging attendees to go to both if possible. The morning event would screen films on inspiring examples of inclusion in higher education and connect it to the work we are doing in the CUNY Unlimited FIG, encouraging other KCC community members to join us. Films to screen will be Dan Habib’s excellent “Opening Doors to College” and possibly “Look I’m in College,” an older documentary about one of the nation’s first inclusion programs at Pace University. People seemed to like the idea of screening a portion (e.g., 10 minutes) of the older film, followed by a look at how far inclusion has come with the newer “Opening Doors” film (35 minutes). This would then be linked by panelists to our activist work in the FIG promoting inclusion through Melissa Riggio and beyond. Lisa and Margot expressed interest in the panel, and Kensaku was open to the idea when asked, though we should iron out details. Jeremy and Sue were also interested in this panel.

Note: Peter has possession of these two films which we could use:

  1. “What does normal Mean?” (Tijeras Films 2006) A film about full inclusion program in New Mexico.
  2. “Look, I’m in College!” By Ken Browne. A film about 4 NYC Black Men that are chosen for a college inclusion pilot at Pace University. https://www.kbprods.com/portfolio/look-college/

The afternoon “student voices and stories” event is then envisioned as including student-teacher pairs (perhaps 3-4 given time constraints). Peter and Sue will reach out to students and/or teachers to create these pairs, and someone from our FIG will facilitate the overall event. We want to foreground student personal experiences and perspectives on inclusion at KCC. Possible faculty and students mentioned for this panel were Sue, Tommy M., Don H., Enid, Autumn H., and Ned B.

In summary, everyone in the FIG can play a role in publicizing, attending, inviting classes (if they have them), presenting, or being on a panel for this exciting week of the DAW. A lot of excitement was expressed that the FIG is joining forces with AAS on this, and Stella laid out a vision that DAW should belong to the whole community – very inspiring!