Background
My Pittsburgh school serves a diverse population of students in Pre-K through fifth grade. Dilworth Traditional Academy is an Arts and Humanities Magnet school, which encourages arts integration into the reading and language arts curriculum. We are an inclusion school, where our students with exceptionalities are a part of all classes. Our gifted and talented population receives in-class inclusion enrichment and in-school specialty courses. Special education goals are met with providers working inside the mainstream classrooms. While most of the disabled students we serve are identified as learning disabled or on the autism spectrum, we have and will continue to serve students with more serious physical disabilities. It is our goal at Dilworth to help students understand how our world and lives are interconnected through their academic, arts, and humanities experiences. Learning how to more effectively communicate about persons with disabilities is essential to this philosophy, and this curricular unit aims at bringing that into the classroom by reading novels, speaking to disability advocates, and viewing current media which promote inclusive understandings that serve to honor individual and collective identity.
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