There’s a saying among those who work in the field of serving those with developmental disabilities: “If you have met one person with a developmental disability, you have met one person with a developmental disability.”
There is no one single way to serve all the individuals we serve at Imagine!. Every service needs to be flexible enough to meet a wide variety of needs, goals, and desires. Since there is no set template for how services are provided, the real key to success comes from always being prepared.
The story below, originally from Imagine!’s August
employee newsletter, about one of Imagine!’s service departments, demonstrates the difference good preparation can make in the lives of some school aged children we serve.
Imagine!’s Out & About department prides itself on providing excellent therapeutic recreation activities to its participants. Therapeutic recreation involves making every opportunity a learning opportunity, so not only are participants encouraged to have fun during an activity, they may also be working on improving their social, communication, safety, or fine and gross motor skills.
At Out & About’s art classes, a large part of the success the participants experience is due to the preparation of staff members before the class. A great example of how to prepare for a class is provided by Alexa Schoeman, the facilitator for art with Out & About’s After School Program and Summer Camp. Alexa is pictured here with Quintin, who receives services from Out & About.
Colette Marie, the Director of Out & About, told us, “I think Alexa's passion for art, and specifically in teaching the kids in our program, is something worth recognizing her for.”
Alexa strives to celebrate what the kids do, and challenges them to develop their talents with new materials, techniques, and subjects. She sends frequent emails to other Out & About staff members so they can be prepared for the classes. Below are some excerpts from one of Alexa’s emails.
“This week we are going to be celebrating the Fourth of July, as well as ourselves and our families with a fun firework activity. The participants will either choose light colored paper and markers or crayons, or dark colored paper and pastels or chalk. Prompt them to first draw a picture of their family celebrating, then add fireworks with glue and glitter, and/or paint blown with straws or squirted from tiny spray bottles. The complete image will look like the participants and their families watching a fireworks display.
Families can look very different for different kiddos, so please let them guide you as to who they want to include in their pictures (pets, friends, grandparents). In that vein, fireworks can look different from person to person, so help demonstrate a firework pattern, but allow them to pour the glue or paint as independently as possible to create how they see a firework. I often notice the participants will say ‘I can’t, will you do it?’ If I walk them through a couple steps instead of jumping in to do it for them, they are able to complete the task independently!
Please encourage doing both the portrait part and the firework part, but if the participant just wants to focus on one part, that’s fine too. Also please be mindful of the glitter as it is super fun to play with, but it’s also expensive! A little bit goes a long way, and please try and shake the extra back into the containers.
Some great things to work on are discussing their subjects, their families, and what that means to them, scale (dad may or may not be drawn bigger than the dog, either is fine, it’s just something to notice), dexterity in use of materials (especially squeezing and drawing with glue), exploring the look of pastels or chalk on dark paper, and, as always, communication with peers in sharing of materials and works.”
Thank you Alexa for demonstrating such dedication to teaching and helping the art classes to be successful by being so well prepared and for helping your co-workers to be well prepared too.
