Volunteer Sigrid Barnes helps a student navigate a classroom during Allen's Disability Awareness Workshop

Andrew Turner I Contributor

Students at Allen Elementary School learned you can play the piano without fingers, among many other things at a Disability Awareness Workshop on Friday.

Fourth-graders at the school participated in the one-day program designed to help students understand the complexities of living with a disability. The workshop provided hands-on learning — and then gave students a chance to help make their school more accessible.

The students rotated through stations designed to help them experience some of the challenges of physical, vision, speech, hearing and learning impairments.

“We’re really trying to demystify disability,” said Amy Shepherd, one of the coordinators of the event, who has a son who is legally blind.

Students were able to experience what it is like to be blind as they used a blindfold and a walking stick to maneuver around. They also wore goggles to obstruct their vision and found difficulty playing a game of tic-tac-toe.

Terri Griffin, state secretary for the National Federation of the Blind, helped teach the students about Braille using tennis balls and a cupcake tray to make different letters. She also gave them a demonstration on reading Braille, which surprised students and teachers alike as she ran her index finger over the dots, reading at a rapid pace.

Breaking down the stigma of disability is important to Griffin, who said she experienced discrimination and harassment growing up as the only blind student at her school.

“I want kids to see that I’m just like everybody else, so other blind kids won’t have to go through what I went through in school,” Griffin said.

At stations designed to teach the kids about physical impairments, students navigated a wheelchair obstacle course, winding their way through a series of cones and struggling to open a door and enter a bathroom while in the wheelchair. They also put on equipment to simulate leg braces to feel the challenges of walking with a leg disability. Trying to carry a tray of plastic food was even more challenging when the students had to rely on a walker to support themselves.

Allen Elementary students discover it's not too easy to make their way around using a walker while carrying a tray of plastic food.

Andrew Turner I Contributor

Steve Schwartz, a volunteer and coordinator for the event, asked a group of students at his prosthetics display if they noticed he was wearing a prosthetic leg. The kids did not, and after guessing it was his left leg, Steve pulled up his pant leg to reveal it was actually on his right leg.

For Schwartz, who was influential in bringing the workshop to the Ann Arbor school district, it was important to take away the fear that some of the students may have had.

“I just try to make it seem more ordinary, less scary,” Schwartz said.

Throughout the day students learned that things they may take for granted, like playing cards, tying shoes, or buttoning buttons, require people with disabilities to improvise. They practiced using sign language while learning about hearing impairment, and they struggled to read posters with mixed up words while learning about reading and learning impairments.

The students did more than just learn though. They put what they learned into practice by going on an "accessibility tour" of the school, in order to see if their school could accommodate people with disabilities. They counted the number of handicap parking spaces, measured the width of the doorways, and checked for wheelchair ramps around the school. When they finished checking the school out, they reported their findings to the principal, Joan Fitzgibbon, and made their recommendations on what could be improved.

Last year the school made adjustments to some of the bathrooms to make them wheelchair accessible after the students recommended it. On Friday the students told Fitzgibbon that the drinking fountains were too high to use from a wheelchair, and they pointed out that there were no push-buttons to automatically open doors for people in wheelchairs.

Allen Principal Joan Fitzgibbon takes recommendations from students to make the school more accessible for people with disabilities

Andrew Turner I Contributor

To end the program, students gathered to hear Schwartz talk about his experiences with physical disability. He talked about the struggles he faced after losing a leg and all his fingers on both hands from a disease at the age of 39. He decided it wasn’t going to keep him from playing piano, and he adapted and continues to play by using his knuckles. He played for the kids and made the point that they should never put limits on themselves.

The Disability Awareness Workshop was originally developed in 1998 by parents on the Rochester Community Schools Special Education Parent Advisory Committee. Schwartz volunteered as a guest speaker for the workshops and began working to bring the program to Ann Arbor. In 2005, Logan Elementary was the first school in Ann Arbor to host the workshop. This year the workshop is to be held in 18 of the district's 20 elementary schools.

Schwartz and Shepherd, along with Kathy Grijalva, act as the coordinators of the workshops, and along with other volunteers make up the Ann Arbor Parent Advisory Committee on Special Education. They work with a variety of community groups to provide the workshops for area fourth graders.

In addition to the teachers and parents, approximately 20 volunteers from the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living, the Ann Arbor Public Schools Education Foundation, the University of Michigan Dance Marathon, and students from the University of Michigan Medical School helped with the event.

Anybody interested in volunteering with an upcoming workshop can find more information at the Ann Arbor Public Schools Education Foundation website, http://www.aapsef.org/, or by calling Wendy Correll at (734) 994-1969.

Andrew Turner is an intern for the Community Team at AnnArbor.com. Have a neighborhood news tip? Email community@annarbor.com.