Investigations
and Other
Activities

Investigations & Other Activities

The proposal for the MOVE House itself was an outcome of several other investigations and activities. Students needed to acquire a knowledge base about the lives of severely physically disabled students and the kinds of help such people need day-by-day in order to participate in our society. They also needed a knowledge base about civil rights history in the United States so they could see that freeing the slaves, enfranchising women, and empowering minorities are foundation steps to making the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act--l990) a reality. They needed to acquire a working knowledge of federal legislation governing disabled students and, especially, how federal law supports and recognizes the needs of disabled students for post-secondary education. Furthermore, once they acquired this knowledge, they needed to learn about a pioneering public school program (MOVE International) for integrating severely disabled students into ordinary school life while at the same time answering to students' special needs. Students then were asked to investigate the MOVE philosophy and practice so they could then envision the creation of an actual MOVE HOUSE, the culmination of their learning. Here in sequential order is a listing of the series of investigations and activities students carried out. It is important to note that from the beginning of the project, the l9 students were broken into three teams of six or seven students each. Different groups undertook different activities and research avenues which they then brought to our "corporation" at large.

SERIES OF INVESTIGATIONS AND ACTIVITIES:

*One group of students researched the federal underpinning and the history of civil rights movements throughout U.S. history, drawing on the Constitution, several amendments, and more recent legislation which is predicated on the founding documents.

*One group of students researched federal law, especially IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) of l994 and its later modifications, focusing on rights and opportunities guaranteed to citizens with special needs.

*The entire class was given a tutorial on MOVE philosophy: its origins, its remarkable spread around the world since the early l990s, its successes, and its identity as a model for creating a post-public school model. We used videos, the MOVE website, distance learning, and a field trip to a MOVE model site in Indianapolis. (For a full listing of MOVE model sites, access to the MOVE International newsletter, and other materials, including videos, visit the MOVE website (www.move-international.org)

*Once all the background material was collected and assimilated, I asked the students to make a direct link to their own lives by writing a personal essay in which they documented the part sitting, standing, and walking plays in one of their ordinary days. (This proved to be one of the most enlightening moments in the project. While thinking about it, one of the dancers in the class created a dance to show through movement how sitting, standing, and walking serve us. Another student wrote an essay about a time when his sitting standing, walking skills failed him...Everyone commented on how he or she had no conscious awareness of these cornerstones to a rich life.)

*Students then undertook the major piece of their project: in groups they wrote pieces of the letter to send to all the colleges and universities. Then they turned the pieces over to me to cobble it into a working draft. I then turned the draft back to the three CEO teams who edited and cut and reformulated and argued passionately over its content. Two students then did the final cobbling, and I typed the next to final draft. This process involved quite a bit of up-front teaching about audience and editing and collaboration. Some of this was conducted by me and some by the CEOs Students, then, did all the application work.

*Students then organized to accomplish the elaborate mailing. They designed a return postcard, acquired stamps and stationery, proofed the postcard, and organized a spreadsheet data base to keep track of all of their letters. Since each university and college received three cards, they worked out a number system so they would know who returned the cards even without signatures.

*Students kept track of their incoming cards in a data base and organized positive responses into geographic areas. Then they began thinking about their follow-up letter and about community resources to help the MOVE House move from a proposal to a reality.

*At this point, a group of students volunteered to work on the follow-up letter, a group volunteered to work on the article about our project, and a group volunteered to work on setting up a discussion about Petey with younger students.

*The entire class was given copies of the highly acclaimed and award-winning YAL novel, Petey (Mikaelsen) to read over spring break. This novel informed them in a less structured way much about the history of treatment of people with severe disabilities throughout the 20th century and did so through the medium of a very good story. Students held their own discussion over the book, and then, at student suggestion, we passed the books on to a fifth grade class. During the last week of school, a group of five seniors went to the elementary school and led a discussion on Petey with the younger students.

----Writing Activities

Since this is an English class, the seniors were writing something in conjunction with the MOVE House project all of the time (12-16 pieces throughout the semester. Not all of them were finished pieces, none of them, with 3 exceptions, were graded). The writings included drafts of portions of the letter to all colleges and universities; reflections on videos and the field trip, essays on Sitting, Standing, and Walking (See above.), preparation of questions, and formal business letters. This work included lots of editing and working on follow up material to positive responses to our initial letter and also a full cycle of sending a query letter and preparing drafts for an article according to the national magazine's specs.

Page created by Helen Mundy Hudson Last updated June 10, 2003.