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Developing a Community Skills Slide Show Library for Trainable Mentally Retarded Students

James R. Engle
Everest School, Vallejo, California

Subject: Special Education/Community Skills
Grade: Severely Handicapped 16- to 21-Year-Olds

"The support and assistance received from individuals, businesses, and government officials has been integral to the program's success."

Purpose and Description of Project

James Engle and the 10 developmentally disabled young adults participating in this project have produced the core of slides designed to help handicapped youngsters and adults. They will, more easily, move about and participate in their community. These young people not only improved their own community skills in the process of producing the slides, but created a continuing resource for themselves and others.

The teacher found that the project succeeded on two levels-(1) the use of photography as an educational tool and leisure skill for the students and (2) the resulting slides functioning as both a creative outlet and a cognitive/testing tool. The students had a role in taking pictures and gained increased competency and independence in their community excursions.

Activities

The students began by studying maps of the city until they could find home, school, the grocery store, parks, and directions. They then used flashcards, games, slides, and other aids to drill on specific community features, such as food items, bus fare, words from traffic signs, and directional indicators.

During this period, Engle and the students developed letters explaining the program to parents and inviting them to participate in and contribute to the project. Engle notes that within a week after appeals to home and community, "we had a camera for each student and twice as many donated rolls of slide and print film." The students, who Engle says, "loved to get their hands on the cameras," practiced such photographic basics as judging distance, framing the subject, and checking light values.

Students and teacher went on community excursions during which they shopped, took public transportation, visited a farm, mailed letters, studied traffic signals, and went to the library. During these experiences, half the students joined the teacher in taking photos while the other half practiced the relevant community skills. Once their slides and prints were developed, the students sorted the "keepers," selected themes and categories for displays, and built bulletin boards. Their several hundred slides and a report on the project are being made available for use and duplication by others.

Materials, Resources, and Expenses

The community as a whole is the central resource for this project. Parents contributed everything from cameras to lunches and bus fares, as well as working with students at home to reinforce photography and community skills. Others who responded were the city bus system, library staff, government officials, grocery stores, drug stores, Boy Scouts, city recreation services, and police department.

Outcomes and Adaptability

Engle reports that the students not only became enthusiastic photographers but showed marked increases in all the skill and independence areas tested. These included planning and mapping, appropriate and safe traveling behaviors, cooperative group functioning, and dealing with a wide range of community situations.

Additional areas that Engle feels could be productively covered through his methods are vocational training, sports, restaurant skills, and personal grooming. He also urges that such slide libraries be used not just with developmentally disabled students but for educating community groups and preparing other school sites for "mainstreaming" experiences.

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