Thursday afternoon, Kids on the Block members Beth Newell ’04, Evan Berding ’05, and Travis Archer ’07 gave a presentation on disability awareness to a class of fourth graders at Saint Mary Catholic School using four arm-length puppets.
Kids on the Block is a community service group at the University that goes into local elementary schools and teaches students about people with disabilities through puppet performances.
According to Newell, the program has been in existence since 1997. The staff at Oddfellows Playhouse initiated the program, and it continues to thrive at Wesleyan. Student volunteers keep the program running every year.
The program is a chapter of a national organization called Kids on the Block, Inc., which provides puppet programs to help inform children on issues of disability awareness and social concerns of people with disabilities.
Wesleyan’s Kids on the Block program visits approximately 25 elementary schools in Cromwell and Middletown. Most recently the group performed at Snow, Gildersleeve, and MacDonough elementary schools. The program currently has 10 puppeteer volunteers.
Performances for Kids on the Block begin after spring break. For the first half of the spring semester members in the group meet one a week to review scripts and study their puppet character.
The group has a repertoire of puppets that they use in each show. The cast includes Renaldo, the amicable visual impaired boy and Mandy, who, though deaf, aspires to be an actress. Brenda is a vehement high school girl with Down Syndrome, who works part time at the veterinary hospital as assistant to the veterinarian. Lastly, Mark is a zealous boy in a wheelchair, who “pops wheelies” and exudes a great deal of panaché.
“My favorite puppet is Mark because of his confidence,” Newell said. “He’s the most charismatic puppet.”
According to the group, it is important for the children to believe that these characters are more than just puppets, and that they have personalities. When the puppets are mounted on the arms of the puppeteers, they become real characters for the children who are watching the performance.
After each performance, students have the opportunity to ask questions about the skit they just saw. According to the group, many students will address the puppets by the name and direct questions to them.
The Kids on the Block skits also educate the audience on the different models used to define disability. The first is the Medicinal Model, which takes a more traditional approach and defines disability as a physical, behavioral, or biological impairment. According to this model, a disabled person is his own disability.
The second method is the Social Model, which labels the environment and attitudes of others to be the source of a person’s disability. For example, the program teaches that, if someone in a wheel chair is unable to enter a building because there is no ramp, it is the building that is disabling to the person.
According to the group, Kids on the Block tries to emphasize the second model and to make students more aware of the ways of how their own understanding of disabled persons can affect the way they treat them.
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