Inquiry Project Final Report Bob Geake Resource Center, Blackstone Valley RIARC photo: Kristen McKenna

I.

In my role as a teacher for the past five years at The Resource Center, affiliated with Blackstone Valley RIARC, I have had the opportunity to implement a number of programs with individuals with developmental disabilities. As a classroom setting, the challenges are inherent in the mix of fifteen to twenty students that attend classes on a daily basis.

The classroom environment is also subject to change even in the midst of one semester's classes as the agency takes in new students or finds employment for others during the course of a year. Because of these factors, a cyclical education of subjects that are repeated in quarterly cycles has evolved as the best method of teaching at our Center. If a revolving door comes to mind, it sometimes is like that, and as a teacher I sometimes wish I had the control to give more education before someone decided to leave classes for a job or a more social activity.

I recognize that to many agencies funded to provide services to adults with disabilities, education is on a lower standing than housing, medical services. life services, and other day programming. The fundamental problem with this resulted low standing is that the less educated adults with developmental disabilities are, the more they are prone to failure in community placements. Far too often, this population of adults with disabilities are led through one failure to another at a community job because they cannot understand or read basic instructions or learn more than the simplest of tasks.

Our minds need to be challenged on a daily basis to stay alert and accept greater challenges in the future. Developmentally disabled adults need that same challenge to learn and practice what most of us do without thought to the processes that enable us to do them so easily.

My question at the beginning of this project was quite simply: will individuals who receive information about the functions of government and the views of those running for elected office make them better informed voters?

This question was the natural result of an earlier Inquiry Project that found after an extensive survey, that 90% of BVC RIARC consumers who had registered to vote could not name their local or national representatives in government. In addition, since this survey was conducted during an election year, while about 10% could name at least one candidate for elected office, fewer than 10% could identify a specific reason why they should or should not vote for that candidate.

Conversely, everyone interviewed during this survey could identify a specific issue that was important to them but did not know whom thay could contact to voice their concerns or wo in the slate of candidates also shared concerns with these issues. As that project ended and students presented a voter information day to 150 BVC RIARC voters, they placed the stepping stone to this project.

II

As the 2002 elections were approaching, the gathering of information on candidates quickly came down to determinging among the class, which races held the most impotance based on issues they identified during a survey in the first class of this session. The students decided that the national campaigns for Congress as well as the Governor's race and the local Pawtucket campaigns for the State Senate were their priorities over the next weeks before the election.

Seven members of the class volunteered to gather specific information on the candidates relating to the issues raised, and present them to the class on an ongoing basis. Any medium of gathering this information was allowed, including radio, television and newspapers. The class also located the web sites of the candidates for the races they had chosen and information was printed for the students from these istes. Each volunteer was given a notebook and folio folder in which to keep and organize the information they had gathered. In addition, as the teacher, I kept a word processing "journal" for the entirety of the project. The students were also encouraged to become independently involved in the campaigns of their local communities.

From the journal:

"Students were pretty excited about writing to their elected representatives and candidates. One, Betty R., specifically asked to write to Rep. Elizabeth Dennigan as she was one of the few women in the State House."

As these first few weeks of classes progressedm we shared information about these candidates and where they stood on the issues the class had identified.

Charles Z printed up a summary of legislation that Sen. Lincoln Chafee has introduced in session, and Chris B. brought in several newspaper clippings to class, including one that portrayed candidate Don Carcieri as being sympathetic to the needs of the disabled. Pedro D. downloaded pages from Rep. Patrick Kennedy's website and after writing to the Congressman, the class received a half hour visit from the Congressman a few weeks later. the issues the candidates had raised during televised debates, helping the students independently decide who they would vote for in November.

During the two weeks before the election, the class was given print outs of voting cards and encouraged to mark their ballots with the choices they had made based on the information gathered. Two members of the class helped to hand out leaflets for the Kennedy campaign on election day and on attended a function for candidate Myrth York.

From the journal:

"I fell this last month has been very productive and the discussions have been active and lively. Next week is the election--most of the students will vote after class so there is time for one more review."

Eleven of fifteen students voted in the election. Nine of them used the voting ballot they had filled out in class for a reference. One, despite hving filled out his card, let his Father take him to the voting booth and show him who to vote for in the election.

III

With the elections over, some in the class were disappointed.

From the journal:

We refocused on what the elections meant for our local and national government, discussing the "shift in Congressto a Republicam majority and the ramifications of that change in the coming months.

The next few weeks were a civics lesson as the class reviewed the branches of national government and their functions, how they operated, how laws were made at both the national and state levels, and finally, how local communtiy governments were run.

For some in the class, much of this information was new to them, such elements of government as Congress giving money to build bridges or the Supreme Court deciding whether of not a woman could have an abortion were alien to their perception of government.

One class was almost entirely taken up with the discussion of taxes and how they are spent, etc. This sparked a lively debate among class members who quickly identified those who were simply echoing long heard complaints about government and some were challenged to answer for their earlier demands for better education, more money for the disabled, etc. while wanting the government to lower taxes.

During these weeks after the election and the transition period, several members of the class made a field trip to the State House and Pawtucket's City Hall.

IV

As war grew imminent and gained prominence in the newspapers and television, students began to divert from our original focus of the class. They asked many questions about why the United States might go to war. Many of these questions were formed from misinformation. One student wondered when Iraq was going to attack us, and we spent one class explaining that Iraq was not the aggressor in this war.

Some class members were anxious about terrorism in their neighborhoods. They were assured that Rhode Island held few incentives for an attack which would be more likely to happen in a larger city like New York, or Los Angeles. When two members of the class made a joke about not having to worry, the other students scolded them for being so flippant about what might happen to other citizens.

What these discussions opened was a window on exploring the United Nations and their role in keeping world peace. We spent several weeks as the news was full of speculation about Bush and the U.N., discussing past roles that the U.N. had played around the world, including Bosnia and Croatia. We discussed how the United Nations had begun, and if the expectations the world held back then were being met today.

The entire class wrote a letter to President and Mrs. Bush, asking them to avoid war unless it were absolutely necessary. When the war began, we found that several staff members around us had cousins or boyfriends in the reserve that were called to the middle east. While our discussions about the war had been sometimes heated between class members, all the students were unanimous in wanting to write to the reservists who were now in the Persian Gulf.

The class wrote several letters to relatives of people at BVC RIARC, and also used e-mail to correspond with one soldier in particular. Lt. Kevin Reim wrote back to the class right away, and kept up correspondence even after working a twelve hour shift.

From the journal:

"The student's reaction to the war is mixed. Some are angry that we are invading Iraq without much help. Others have made disparaging remarks about Muslims (echoed from a former marine dad no doubt), while others support the war and have voiced their opinions. All the students are taken with Kevin's emails. He writes to us at least three times a week from a laptop PC in his missile transport."

The class also coorinated a collection for "Operation Shoebox" and put together 32 boxes for the troops.

Within weeks of the troops invading Iraq, Kevin came back and visited the class to thank them for their letters.

V

As the excitement from the war died down, the class began its last weeks refocusing on those issues that had been chosen at the beginning of this Inquiry Project. The class began to read the legislation that was passed or pending at the State House, and Chris B. wrote to Majority leaders Irons concerned a bill that would give home owners who are Veterans, large tax cuts in various communities. Chris felt that with much of the news now focused on the state deficit, that it was poor judgment to cut city, town and state revenues this way.

The entire class also wrote to Governor Don Carcieri when his Literacy Task force and pledge of adult education moneys was announced. The Governor responded to the class with a warm letter that expressed ho important it was that students like them become involved with issues.

As the Inquiry Project ended, a final survey was taken which showed that 70% of the students were aware of their representatives in Congress, could name the President, the Governor, and could identify topics that we had discussed in class.

In final summary, I would have to conclude that despite orld politics intruding on a project that was meant to be domestic, much was accomplished by these students. From learning to gather information, to using the Web to e-mail members of Congress, to reading the newspapers more often, and learning to express their own views and vote independently, the project created a vital learning experience.

From the surveys conducted at the beginning and end of the project, I concluded that engaging students with information about candidates and issues during an election year can not only make them better informed voters, but better citizens as witnessed by the fact hat long after the elections were opver, students were reading about legislation and writing to their representatives to voice their opinions.

I feel that such an educational program should be held in the weeks prior to an election during every election year to help inform and engage students with developmental disabilities so that they might make their own choice on the ballot and achieve another important form of independence.

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